Insurance Is Not Healthcare: My Own Coverage Story
When I took off my golden handcuffs and left corporate medicine, I knew I'd lose my health insurance.
It's a thing I'd neglected in my twenties ("I don't need that"), thought about in my thirties ("I should really get that"), and hadn't gone without since my forties — I started my first job as a doctor, as a medical resident, on my fortieth birthday. I got married after residency, and my blended family of five had been covered the whole time: doctor's visits, dental, eye care, wellness visits, sick visits, screenings, mental health, chronic conditions, specialists, ERs, urgent care. The whole gamut of what Western medicine offers. And we used all of it.
We also took it completely for granted. It was part of my employment contract, and coverage in corporate medicine is excellent and handled behind the scenes — it never hits your paycheck. At one point we moved to a high-deductible plan to open up a Health Savings Account. That meant paying about $6,000 out of pocket every year before coverage kicked in, but it was worth it: we contributed around $8,000 a year to the HSA, paid the deductible out of it, and quietly invested the difference in index funds. Not a fortune, but a great "get rich slow" scheme.
Then I left. And I had to find coverage again — as an independent doctor with an uncertain income. It was one of the first real reality checks of chasing the DPC dream.
The Sticker Shock
I asked what it would cost to keep my existing plan through COBRA: about $800 per month, per family member. For my family of five, that's $4,000 a month — plus the $6,000 deductible. With income uncertain, it was a nonstarter.
Marketplace plans weren't much better: roughly $2,000 to $3,000 a month on the low end, with deductibles between $7,500 and $13,000.
And here's the part everyone paying attention already knows: having insurance doesn't actually get you healthcare. Weeks-long waits for appointments, mammograms, colonoscopies, therapists. Acute needs pushed aside, driving people to the ER for things that were never emergencies. And always that deductible standing between you and any coverage at all. If you can't afford the deductible, you effectively don't have insurance — because nothing gets covered until you've paid your way to coverage.
I didn't know how I was going to get around this.
Leaning on the DPC Community
So I did what this community does: I learned from the people who'd gone before me. In the early days that meant books by Doug Farrago, Paul Thomas, and Shane Purcell, and podcasts like My DPC Story (thank you, Maryal Concepcion) and DPC Life (thank you, Anne Gonzales).
That's where I learned about health sharing — a model that sounds almost too good to be true. Members pay a monthly fee into a shared pool, and qualifying medical expenses get paid out of that pool. Depending on the company, it's a very big pool.
An important caveat, and I want to be clear about it: health sharing is not insurance. It isn't regulated like insurance, and it doesn't legally guarantee that any given expense will be paid. That's a real distinction, and anyone considering it should understand it going in. That said, for many people — including my own family — it has turned out to be a powerful, affordable option.
(In the interest of full transparency: I became an affiliate of Zion Healthshare, one of the companies in this space. I'm sharing my honest experience, and you should always evaluate whether any option fits your own situation.)
Building Something That Works
I wanted health sharing, but I also wanted to keep my HSA — and the tax advantages of an HSA are only available if you're paired with an ACA-qualifying high-deductible plan. That requirement stopped me in my tracks, until I found a company called Planstin.
Planstin bundles Zion Healthshare with Minimum Essential Coverage — the piece that covers things health sharing alone often won't, like a $1,000+ colonoscopy, mammograms, vaccinations (the shingles shot I'm due for runs about $200 out of pocket), and an annual wellness visit. Bundled together, it qualifies for an HSA. (To be clear, I have no affiliate relationship with Planstin and receive nothing if you sign up with them — I just found it genuinely solved my problem.)
Total cost for my family of five: $769 a month.
So instead of $4,000 a month plus a deductible, we pay $769 — and then add DPC memberships on the side, which cover all our actual doctor visits: wellness, sickness, and everything in between. DPC for my wife and me runs about $280 a month. Our daughter in her twenties, who sees a doctor about once a year, sticks with health-sharing coverage alone. Our sons have primary care through my wife's ex and his insurance. And if a catastrophic event hits, we're not tied to any network — health sharing covers it past our "unsharable amount" (like a deductible), which sits ready in our HSA.
What This Means for You
I spent a lot of time researching the supply chain for catastrophic coverage, and I ended up with something that isn't insurance at all. I'll be honest — the cost is still significant. But it works for us, and it's freed up real money that now goes toward actually staying healthy.
These days I work with patients in every kind of situation:
Some have no catastrophic coverage at all and choose DPC simply so they have a physician they can reach and work with.
Some have coverage through work or the marketplace and add DPC because they can't get the management — or even the appointments — they want from their in-network doctor.
And some were already spending money on naturopaths, functional medicine, hormone clubs, or weight-loss clinics — sometimes all four — and realized they could consolidate all of it under one roof with me.
Here's my offer: if you're looking at DPC, catastrophic coverage, or both, talk to me before you decide. There are people in the insurance world with an incentive to keep these options quiet — choosing DPC or health sharing doesn't pay a broker a commission. Not every broker is acting in bad faith, but I've heard some genuinely wild misinformation come from broker's mouths.
For Employers
If you have more than five employees, there are catastrophic coverage options that look and feel much more like traditional insurance. There are also ways to build self-funded plans using the money you're already spending on premiums — money you'd keep and administer yourself for qualifying expenses, rolling over whatever goes unused instead of watching premiums simply disappear.
With Colorado individual-market premiums requesting an average increase of about 11% for 2027 (and higher in some regions — these are requested rates still pending state approval), there's never been a better time to look at alternatives.
Come see the work I've put into figuring this out, and let's talk about how insurance is not healthcare — and how the money you spend on it now could actually be used to keep you, your family, or your team healthy.
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