Insurance DOESN'T cover it. If you're in the US, google up "Concierge Doctor" in your area. The idea is you pay a yearly "membership" to the practice essentially. What this allows is that instead of being like a normal PCP where the Dr needs to have thousands of patients to make the practice sustainable due to how insurance pays out they make enough money on the memberships to do with a TON fewer patients. What this does is it let's them given honest and dedicated attention to the patients they have. They still bill what they can to your insurance, but the yearly fee for them won't be covered.
If you've ever become hyper-frustrated with how is feels like you struggle to get a Dr appointment, have to schedule one way far out, can never get one when you have something come up suddenly, and then when you get to the Dr you wait a long time, get put into a room talk to a nurse for a while, then get MAYBE 5-10 minutes with the actual Dr, then feel like they hand you a "one size fits most" diagnosis (usually with a script for whatever the latest pharma rep coming through was pimping) and you have some cash to spare, then you're the target audience for Concierge Doctors.
When she was seeing one my wife never had to wait more than 2 days to see the Dr. When she went in there were nurses there, but most of the time was with the actual Dr. The Doctor would explain anything she had a question about. The Doctor would answer emails, their patient portal, and even texts. She had the Doctors actual cell phone number if she needed to call it. The doctor would coordinate to make sure the various specialists and diagnostics were all on the same page.
OTOH, it added a few benjis a month onto the budget.
But with what she was going through I consider it worth every penny we spent at the time.
Cad commentary on this is one of a legitimately good intentioned advice, but that came across a little odd. If I was going to go full tilt boogie and dive into all things medical enough to be able to self diagnose or fully guide my care regardless of my Dr or her PAs opinion I believe it would introduce a higher chance of medical misstep.
