30 Million People Are Uninsured. New Startup Wants to Connect Them Directly to Doctors.
A child visits the doctor for a checkup.
When Eli Hall was in his thirties, he had a kidney stone that needed surgery. Despite having medical insurance, his out-of-pocket costs for the procedure came to $4,000.
Mira promises that most routine visits will cost around $99 or slightly above.
Hall, an Arizona-based small business owner soon discovered that such costs were proving to be the norm. As a result, he stopped buying insurance altogether. Now he pays in to a subscription-based model of healthcare where $300 per month will get him, his wife, and two children unlimited access (either over the phone or through in-office visits) to doctors in the Redirect Health network. This subscription also meets the Affordable Care Act insurance mandate.
Hall's move away from the traditional insurance care model might have been deliberate, but not everyone is as lucky. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 30.1 million people under the age of 65 were uninsured in the United States. Now, a new startup called TalktoMira is helping those without insurance access doctors for routine visits — affordably.
The service, accessed through the website (or phone or text), evaluates a user's symptoms and returns recommendations for specific doctors that factor in wait times, traffic conditions, and pricing. Khang T. Vuong, the founder and CEO, expects that doctors will be willing to provide discounts through this model, as they're eliminating the administrative costs associated with the insurance middleman. Some discounts can be as high as 50 percent, according to the website.
Mira promises that most routine visits will cost around $99 or slightly above. "This provides people who can't afford paying $3,000 to $4,000 per year in insurance premiums an alternative to access basic healthcare," Vuong says.
As of press time, Mira is available in the Washington D.C., Northern Virginia, and Dallas, and will soon expand across the country via a partnership with a national network of healthcare providers.
"For those who live in places where we don't have a presence, users can still search for the nearest and least busy urgent cares. The goal is to build a national database of walk-in clinics with straightforward upfront pricing so the 30 million uninsured and 56 million underinsured have access to same or next day primary care at an upfront affordable cost," Vuong says.
Getting Around Traditional Insurance
Mira caters to the uninsured by helping them navigate the healthcare system the moment they need it. "Currently cash patients have to rely mainly on Google for searching for options," Vuong says, adding that patients do also occasionally work with the app ZocDoc for booking. "However [ZocDoc] info has no pricing information; we fill in that much-needed gap," Vuong says. In focus groups TalktoMira conducted, a majority (70 percent) reported cost of service as their main barrier to healthcare.
As Hall's subscription-based model proves, cash-driven access like TalktoMira is not the only option for the uninsured. Direct primary care like the kind that Redirect Health delivers is another way to get around high premiums. It does so by effectively eliminating the administrative costs associated with the middleman, says David Slepak, the CEO of Redirect. Doctors who are tired of packed schedules and the administrative headaches involved with the insurance model are only too happy to be a part of subscription or cash-based models, explains Vuong.
But TalktoMira and direct primary care models don't resolve the challenges of insurance related to catastrophic events.
James Corbett, Principal at Initium Health, points out the uninsured can also access federally qualified health centers across the country or a free clinic, but these might have problems of long wait times.
"Not a Cure-All"
TalktoMira might not provide the same level of consistency that seeing a primary care doctor does, though Vuong says there are ways to see the same doctor again by choosing them through the system. He adds that TalkToMira also empowers patients by asking them about their satisfaction after the visit and to see if any further checkups might be warranted, thus enabling patients to rate their doctors just like they would any other service provider.
"I might not have one primary care doctor, but I have the entire system behind me," says Hall.
But TalktoMira and direct primary care models don't resolve the challenges of insurance related to catastrophic events. The subscription model won't kick in if the patient has a heart attack and needs to be hospitalized, for example. So patients are also encouraged to purchase a high-deductible, low-premium plan for such contingencies.
"We're spending so much on insurance for the car that we can't afford the gas to drive the car."
Vuong recognizes TalktoMira doesn't solve all the problems related to insurance, but it can at least start by helping to facilitate access to routine visits. Even the insured don't always seek out a doctor because of copays and high deductibles, Slepak says. "We're spending so much on insurance for the car that we can't afford the gas to drive the car," he says.
TalktoMira is hoping that by making routine care accessible, it might both lessen the crunch in emergency rooms where many people don't really belong, and also nip problems in the bud.
"It's not a cure-all, not a panacea," admits Vuong. "It won't get you a knee replacement. But at least I can get you in the system so you might not have to get to that point."
Following the Footsteps of a 105-Year-Old Sprinter
No human has run a distance of 100 meters faster than Usain Bolt’s lightning streak in 2009. He set this record at age 22. But what will Bolt’s time be when he’s 105?
At the Louisiana Senior Games in November 2021, 105-year-old Julia Hawkins of Baton Rouge became the oldest woman to run 100 meters in an official competition, qualifying her for this year's National Senior Games. Perhaps not surprisingly, she was the only competitor in the race for people 105 and older. In this Leaps.org video, I interview Hawkins about her lifestyle habits over the decades. Then I ask Steven Austad, a pioneer in studying the mechanisms of aging, for his scientific insights into how those aspiring to become super-agers might follow in Hawkins' remarkable footsteps.
Following the Footsteps of a 105-Year-Old Sprinter
No human has run a distance of 100 meters faster than Usain Bolt’s lightning streak in 2009. He set this record at age 22. But what will Bolt’s time be when ...Matt Fuchs is the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org. He is also a contributing reporter to the Washington Post and has written for the New York Times, Time Magazine, WIRED and the Washington Post Magazine, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @fuchswriter.
Monkeypox produces more telltale signs than COVID-19. Scientists think that a “ring” vaccination strategy can be used when these signs appear to help with squelching the current outbreak of this disease.
A new virus has emerged and stoked fears of another pandemic: monkeypox. Since May 2022, it has been detected in 29 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico among international travelers and their close contacts. On a worldwide scale, as of June 30, there have been 5,323 cases in 52 countries.
The good news: An existing vaccine can go a long way toward preventing a catastrophic outbreak. Because monkeypox is a close relative of smallpox, the same vaccine can be used—and it is about 85 percent effective against the virus, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Also on the plus side, monkeypox is less contagious with milder illness than smallpox and, compared to COVID-19, produces more telltale signs. Scientists think that a “ring” vaccination strategy can be used when these signs appear to help with squelching this alarming outbreak.
How it’s transmitted
Monkeypox spreads between people primarily through direct contact with infectious sores, scabs, or bodily fluids. People also can catch it through respiratory secretions during prolonged, face-to-face contact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
As of June 30, there have been 396 documented monkeypox cases in the U.S., and the CDC has activated its Emergency Operations Center to mobilize additional personnel and resources. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is aiming to boost testing capacity and accessibility. No Americans have died from monkeypox during this outbreak but, during the COVID-19 pandemic (February 2020 to date), Africa has documented 12,141 cases and 363 deaths from monkeypox.
Ring vaccination proved effective in curbing the smallpox and Ebola outbreaks. As the monkeypox threat continues to loom, scientists view this as the best vaccine approach.
A person infected with monkeypox typically has symptoms—for instance, fever and chills—in a contagious state, so knowing when to avoid close contact with others makes it easier to curtail than COVID-19.
Advantages of ring vaccination
For this reason, it’s feasible to vaccinate a “ring” of people around the infected individual rather than inoculating large swaths of the population. Ring vaccination proved effective in curbing the smallpox and Ebola outbreaks. As the monkeypox threat continues to loom, scientists view this as the best vaccine approach.
With many infections, “it normally would make sense to everyone to vaccinate more widely,” says Wesley C. Van Voorhis, a professor and director of the Center for Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. However, “in this case, ring vaccination may be sufficient to contain the outbreak and also minimize the rare, but potentially serious side effects of the smallpox/monkeypox vaccine.”
There are two licensed smallpox vaccines in the United States: ACAM2000 (live Vaccina virus) and JYNNEOS (live virus non-replicating). The ACAM 2000, Van Voorhis says, is the old smallpox vaccine that, in rare instances, could spread diffusely within the body and cause heart problems, as well as severe rash in people with eczema or serious infection in immunocompromised patients.
To prevent organ damage, the current recommendation would be to use the JYNNEOS vaccine, says Phyllis Kanki, a professor of health sciences in the division of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. However, according to a report on the CDC’s website, people with immunocompromising conditions could have a higher risk of getting a severe case of monkeypox, despite being vaccinated, and “might be less likely to mount an effective response after any vaccination, including after JYNNEOS.”
In the late 1960s, the ring vaccination strategy became part of the WHO’s mission to globally eradicate smallpox, with the last known natural case described in Somalia in 1977. Ring vaccination can also refer to how a clinical trial is designed, as was the case in 2015, when this approach was used for researching the benefits of an investigational Ebola vaccine in Guinea, Kanki says.
“Since Monkeypox spreads by close contact and we have an effective vaccine, vaccinating high-risk individuals and their contacts may be a good strategy to limit transmission,” she says, adding that privacy is an important ethical principle that comes into play, as people with monkeypox would need to disclose their close contacts so that they could benefit from ring vaccination.
Rapid identification of cases and contacts—along with their cooperation—is essential for ring vaccination to be effective. Although mass vaccination also may work, the risk of infection to most of the population remains low while supply of the JYNNEOS vaccine is limited, says Stanley Deresinski, a clinical professor of medicine in the Infectious Disease Clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Other strategies for preventing transmission
Ideally, the vaccine should be administered within four days of an exposure, but it’s recommended for up to 14 days. The WHO also advocates more widespread vaccination campaigns in the population segment with the most cases so far: men who engage in sex with other men.
The virus appears to be spreading in sexual networks, which differs from what was seen in previously reported outbreaks of monkeypox (outside of Africa), where risk was associated with travel to central or west Africa or various types of contact with individuals or animals from those locales. There is no evidence of transmission by food, but contaminated articles in the environment such as bedding are potential sources of the virus, Deresinski says.
Severe cases of monkeypox can occur, but “transmission of the virus requires close contact,” he says. “There is no evidence of aerosol transmission, as occurs with SARS-CoV-2, although it must be remembered that the smallpox virus, a close relative of monkeypox, was transmitted by aerosol.”
Deresinski points to the fact that in 2003, monkeypox was introduced into the U.S. through imports from Ghana of infected small mammals, such as Gambian giant rats, as pets. They infected prairie dogs, which also were sold as pets and, ultimately, this resulted in 37 confirmed transmissions to humans and 10 probable cases. A CDC investigation identified no cases of human-to-human transmission. Then, in 2021, a traveler flew from Nigeria to Dallas through Atlanta, developing skin lesions several days after arrival. Another CDC investigation yielded 223 contacts, although 85 percent were deemed to be at only minimal risk and the remainder at intermediate risk. No new cases were identified.
How much should we be worried
But how serious of a threat is monkeypox this time around? “Right now, the risk to the general public is very low,” says Scott Roberts, an assistant professor and associate medical director of infection prevention at Yale School of Medicine. “Monkeypox is spread through direct contact with infected skin lesions or through close contact for a prolonged period of time with an infected person. It is much less transmissible than COVID-19.”
The monkeypox incubation period—the time from infection until the onset of symptoms—is typically seven to 14 days but can range from five to 21 days, compared with only three days for the Omicron variant of COVID-19. With such a long incubation, there is a larger window to conduct contact tracing and vaccinate people before symptoms appear, which can prevent infection or lessen the severity.
But symptoms may present atypically or recognition may be delayed. “Ring vaccination works best with 100 percent adherence, and in the absence of a mandate, this is not achievable,” Roberts says.
At the outset of infection, symptoms include fever, chills, and fatigue. Several days later, a rash becomes noticeable, usually beginning on the face and spreading to other parts of the body, he says. The rash starts as flat lesions that raise and develop fluid, similar to manifestations of chickenpox. Once the rash scabs and falls off, a person is no longer contagious.
“It's an uncomfortable infection,” says Van Voorhis, the University of Washington School of Medicine professor. There may be swollen lymph nodes. Sores and rash are often limited to the genitals and areas around the mouth or rectum, suggesting intimate contact as the source of spread.
Symptoms of monkeypox usually last from two to four weeks. The WHO estimated that fatalities range from 3 to 6 percent. Although it’s believed to infect various animal species, including rodents and monkeys in west and central Africa, “the animal reservoir for the virus is unknown,” says Kanki, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health professor.
Too often, viruses originate in parts of the world that are too poor to grapple with them and may lack the resources to invest in vaccines and treatments. “This disease is endemic in central and west Africa, and it has basically been ignored until it jumped to the north and infected Europeans, Americans, and Canadians,” Van Voorhis says. “We have to do a better job in health care and prevention all over the world. This is the kind of thing that comes back to bite us.”