Doctor Forgoes Employer's Health Plan

One Minnesota doctor hopes to learn more about what his patients experience.

ByABC News
July 22, 2009, 6:01 PM

July 23, 2009— -- While medical students and doctors-in-training are often told to try and put themselves in their patient's shoes, one Minnesota physician has taken that idea a step further in trying to understand what many of his patients go through in trying to navigate the individual health insurance market.

And so Dr. Will Nicholson gave up his employer-based health insurance.

Having finished his residency, Nicholson, a family medicine doctor in Maplewood, Minn., opted not to take COBRA -- a federal program that would have allowed him to continue the insurance plan from his residency -- and not to get insurance through his new job at St. John's Hospital.

Instead, he said, he plans to buy insurance individually -- a situation he said is a necessity, rather than an option, for many of his patients.

"What I'm trying to do is navigate the private health insurance market," Nicholson said. "A lot of my patients have to deal with this, they have frustrations and problems."

And he hopes to learn more about exactly what those frustrations and problems are by experiencing them himself.

"I'd like to challenge myself to do a little bit more, as a physician, the way I challenge my patients to do a little bit more for their health on a regular basis," Nicholson said.

Through this experiment, he said he hopes to determine what an informed consumer can purchase on the individual insurance market.

"After seven years of medical training, I should be pretty adept at navigating the system," he said.

On the other hand, he said, the experiment may show that insurance can be better had by the individual. He said one thing he hopes to see is whether a savvy consumer could actually save money through the individual market.

While extending his previous coverage would have cost $300 per month, Nicholson said his current plan costs less than $100.

Although Nicholson, 31, said he has no conditions that would require a great deal of medical care, he noted that, "As a physician, I'm acutely aware of the possibility."