With cost and accessibility acting as two major barriers to quality care for patients, there is a potential solution to this massive problem: Direct primary care.

The DPC approach, unlike the overly burdensome current system, allows doctors to spend more time with patients instead of filling out paperwork to submit to a third-party payer. And anyone who has been to a doctor’s office in the past few years can attest to the insane amount of time doctors spend filling out mountains of paperwork.

One of the advantages of DPC agreements as opposed to the current health system is that it allows doctors to charge a membership fee for primary care services ranging from $50 to $100 per month for routine health services.

The substantial cost benefits of DPC couldn’t be clearer. According to a study in the American Journal of Managed Care, DPC patients are 52 percent less likely to use services at an expensive hospital than at a traditional private practice.

What’s more, under a DPC model, medical practice overhead can be reduced by as much as 40 percent. This is important because these savings are often passed onto the patients.

Currently, 32 states have approved DPC and 12 states have pending pilot programs that would expand DPC to Medicaid. More than a quarter of a million Americans are using DPC to access quality health care. //

One obstacle to DPC expansion is the quasi-socialist health care system that is filled with corporate cronyism and government overregulation.

Fortunately, the South Carolina Legislature is addressing this issue and introduced legislation that would codify DPC agreements into law. This bill would define DPC and not constitute it as health insurance. By differentiating DPC and health insurance, doctors would be able to continue to offer monthly membership fees in exchange for primary care services.

DPC also removes layers of government red tape and cuts out the health insurance middlemen.