Doctors Who Hate Insurance So Much They Go Without It Themselves

Some health-care professionals willingly pass on coverage
Fed up with system, ‘I just don’t want to pay them anymore’

A medical doctor, right, examines a patient at a CCI Health and Wellness Services health center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S., on Tuesday, April 18, 2017. After the failure of Republicans first attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and President Donald Trumps subsequent threats to let the program explode, more health insurers are threatening to pull out of the Obamacare health-care program next year, while others may sharply raise the premiums they charge.Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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By Emma Ockerman

May 15, 2018 at 10:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

As an E.R. doctor in New Orleans, Brian Falkner attends to the kind of gruesome medical cases that would seem to underscore the importance of health insurance.

And yet he doesn’t have any. Nor, for that matter, do his wife or 9-year-old daughter. After they lost their Affordable Care Act plan last year, Falkner decided to just go without. He’s happy -- so far -- with the results. Their spending on doctor’s appointments and prescriptions has come in well under the $1,200 they were shelling out in monthly premiums.