[Rick Lee]

A close college friend is a dentist in the Bay Area. She started her own practice about 12 yrs ago and was miserable. She just wanted to be a dentist, not an office manager, do billing, hiring, etc. Last I spoke with her, she was looking into going back to work at someone else's practice and just be a dentist. So I can sympathize with doctors who want to go concierge. They already have the staff to handle all the non-doctor work, but getting paid by insurance X% of what they actually bill doesn't make their overhead go down by that delta. And our healthcare system would be turned upside down if people actually saw what stuff cost beforehand and paid with their own money.