What's Not for Sale?

[jeffrey]

There are some things money can’t buy—but these days, not many. Almost everything is up for sale. For example:

• A prison-cell upgrade: $90 a night. In Santa Ana, California, and some other cities, nonviolent offenders can pay for a clean, quiet jail cell, without any non-paying prisoners to disturb them.

• Access to the carpool lane while driving solo: $8. Minneapolis, San Diego, Houston, Seattle, and other cities have sought to ease traffic congestion by letting solo drivers pay to drive in carpool lanes, at rates that vary according to traffic.

• The services of an Indian surrogate mother: $8,000. Western couples seeking surrogates increasingly outsource the job to India, and the price is less than one-third the going rate in the United States...

What Isn’t for Sale? - Magazine - The Atlantic

[bjl584]

Steve,
you can make a fortune on giving your phone number out.

[disneysteve]

Steve,
you can make a fortune on giving your phone number out.

Concierge practices are a source of great debate. I know one person personally who has done it and have read about plenty of others. Just a week or so ago, we learned of a local neurologist who has done it which is highly unusual. It is typically primary care doctors (family practice, internal medicine). For a specialist to do it is rather odd as they tend to depend on patient referrals from PCPs. That means I can no longer refer my patients to that neurologist for episodic care. It seems he is just trying to build a base of his chronic patients and nobody else.

I am not interested or willing to go that route, though it does hold certain appeal. Besides, it would never work in my current location, one of the poorest cities in America. I'd have to move to a nearby, more affluent town, but doing it as a new doc in the area would probably be impossible.