Should Insurance Pay for Primary Care? A 3-Lens Take

What’s the Problem?

Should insurance cover your annual checkup? It seems like a simple question—but dig deeper, and you’ll find a system bloated with inefficiencies, middlemen, and misaligned incentives. In this piece, I explore a bold argument from a recent paper that challenges the status quo: maybe routine primary care shouldn’t be covered by insurance at all. Through the lens of an economist, an engineer, and a physician (plus patient), I break down why our current model is so costly—and what a simpler, more efficient future could look like.

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