> I have decade-long relationships with all of my doctors. The thought of a health plan that forces me to change all my doctor relationships is anger-provoking and exhausting.
You are clearly not in the bottom 50% of health care spenders. You would be in the group that would keep private insurance and be happy.
> One Medical looks interesting, but I wonder how they keep the price that low. Is it subsidized?
No.
> Are they putting constraints on physicians and what they can do in the same way BetterHelp messes with the therapists?
The vast majority of their "doctors" are Physician's Assistants. You can see whoever you want for whatever you want (that they provide).
> Are they servicing only the young and healthy?
Mainly. It's a clinic. You can't go there for Open Heart Surgery and cancer treatments. They'll just (cheaply) refer you to a specialist (who will be expensive and require insurance).
What you can do is avoid huge wait times and get good enough treatment for ~90% of what the mostly healthy group of ~50% of the population needs for fair up-front prices - which previously did not exist.
That's a mighty big assumption you're making. I've had private insurance for years, and I've always been unhappy with it because of treatment delays, Treatment denials, pre-approvals, and unrealistic copay limitations.
Many of my health needs are not expensive, but my body's reaction to treatments is. Frequently, cheap drugs are all side effects and no benefit. Also, private insurance has bizarre coverage gaps. For example, ambulance costs. When I had a heart attack, I drove myself for 45 minutes to the nearest hospital with a cath lab rather than take an ambulance and end up with God knows how many thousands of dollars in uncovered ambulance fees. Then there are things like cardiac rehab, which go a long way toward restoring cardiac health. 12 weeks, three times a week at $50 copays, was an expense I wasn't counting on. When I qualified for Medicare, the quality of care improved significantly. Usually, wait times for service are much lower than with private insurance.
I also resent private insurance because my premium dollars go toward enriching stockholders rather than providing care for all policyholders.
Okay - so you could keep your private insurance and not be happy, or move to Medicare and also not be happy.
I think you want a third solution - but that seems highly unlikely to be available in the mid term - and it doesn't look like anything is changing in the short term.
Who knows, my crystal ball doesn't work any better than anyone else's.