The big box retailer opened its first Walmart Health in-store clinic this month in Dallas, Georgia, offering primary medical, dental, vision, and mental health care.
Though Walmart has not yet made public any plans for a national roll-out of similar facilities, the new clinic in the Atlanta suburbs appears to be a pilot for a new way to provide basic health care to Americans.
"Walmart Health is proof that the private sector can deliver high-quality, transparently priced health care services without government intervention," says Elise Amez-Droz, a health care policy associate at the Mercatus Center, a think tank based at George Mason University.
"The best way to cater to our varying needs is to let patients have the final say in their health care decisions, shopping for better value and reaping the benefits in the form of better care and savings."
Access to care is an often overlooked part of the national debate over heath care, which tends to focus on providing insurance rather than health care itself.
The lack of transparency in health care prices-largely the result of third parties, like insurance companies, serving as intermediaries between consumer and provider-encourages the inflation of health care costs and the overconsumption of health care.
A single Walmart health clinic on the outskirts of Atlanta isn't going to fix any of the big problems with the American health care system.
https://reason.com/2019/09/23/walmarts-entry-into-health-care-could-be-hugely-disruptive-in-all-the-best-ways/
Though Walmart has not yet made public any plans for a national roll-out of similar facilities, the new clinic in the Atlanta suburbs appears to be a pilot for a new way to provide basic health care to Americans.
"Walmart Health is proof that the private sector can deliver high-quality, transparently priced health care services without government intervention," says Elise Amez-Droz, a health care policy associate at the Mercatus Center, a think tank based at George Mason University.
"The best way to cater to our varying needs is to let patients have the final say in their health care decisions, shopping for better value and reaping the benefits in the form of better care and savings."
Access to care is an often overlooked part of the national debate over heath care, which tends to focus on providing insurance rather than health care itself.
The lack of transparency in health care prices-largely the result of third parties, like insurance companies, serving as intermediaries between consumer and provider-encourages the inflation of health care costs and the overconsumption of health care.
A single Walmart health clinic on the outskirts of Atlanta isn't going to fix any of the big problems with the American health care system.
https://reason.com/2019/09/23/walmarts-entry-into-health-care-could-be-hugely-disruptive-in-all-the-best-ways/
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