Our Story
What is the FMMA?
How the FMMA Works
The FMMA works to identify patients willing to pay cash, providers willing to list their prices, and businesses attempting to provide affordable quality health plans. We connect these “buyers and sellers” who believe in our simple, free market-driven approach to medicine, and help spread this approach to healthcare around the nation.
The Free Market Medical Association’s goal is to unite and strengthen the benefits of free market healthcare. Our mission is to unite all of the free market “Islands of Excellence” in healthcare, and facilitate:
Patients finding free market doctors.
Facilities being able to run their operations like businesses.
Third-party health plan vendors who also work to facilitate the above.
Free market physicians growing their practices.
Business owners who want to provide quality affordable healthcare for their employees.
Free Market Economy: Empowering willing buyers, good-faith facilitators, and transparent sellers.
Willing Buyers
Patients & self-insured employers who make healthcare purchasing decisions based on cost and quality.
Examples
Individual Patients; insured or uninsured, looking to shop fair healthcare pricing.
Self-Funded Employers who want to reduce claims spend while maintaining/increasing benefits.
Publicly Funded Employers looking to maintain/increase benefits without increasing tax liability.
Good Faith Facilitators
Businesses who help connect buyers & providers while abiding by Free Market Pillars. (TPAs, Health Shares, etc.)
Examples
TPAs
Health Shares
Cost-Sharing Ministries
Sellers
Honest sellers of healthcare goods & services who believe in providing up-front, bundled prices and cost-efficient, high-quality care.
Examples
Direct Primary Care Physicians and other cash-pay, free market private practice physicians and specialists.
Facilities and surgeons who offer up-front, transparent, bundled pricing.
Imaging, Lab and Preventive Care providers who offer up-front, transparent, bundled pricing.
Believe it or not, when healthcare works along these free-market guidelines, patients pay drastically less for care, providers are paid more and paid more quickly, and the outcomes are almost universally superior to the traditional hospital and insurance paradigm.
FMMA History
An Anesthesiologist and a Third-Party Administrator Walk into a Bar…
The Free Market Medical Association traces its roots back to the accidental 2011 meeting of two men who were both frustrated with the dysfunctional, broken state of healthcare in America.
FMMA History
An Anesthesiologist and a Third-Party Administrator Walk into a Bar…
The Free Market Medical Association traces its roots back to the accidental 2011 meeting of two men who were both frustrated with the dysfunctional, broken state of healthcare in America.
Jay Kempton had been CEO and president of the Kempton Group, a third-party health benefits administrator, for more than a decade, and was fed up with the outrageous billing his clients were hit with – as well as the overall lack of transparency in the system.
Meanwhile, Dr. Keith Smith had been operating an outpatient surgery center that brazenly pioneered the public posting of prices for every procedure they offered – a pie-in-the-face for hospitals and insurance companies who thrive on hidden or manufactured prices.
Dr. Smith had always seen insurance as the enemy. Jay Kempton had always seen hospitals as the enemy. Just when it seemed the two were about to lock horns, they suddenly realized they were on the same side.
Since That Serendipitous Meeting In 2011
Jay and Dr. Smith began working together in 2012, formed the Free Market Medical Association in 2014 and have been fighting side-by-side in furtherance of the FMMA’s mission. Over the past decade-plus, the FMMA has seen remarkable success and expansion:
Annual Conference with 500 attendees & 25 vendors
33 Local Chapters in 27 States Nationwide
Featured on Numerous National News Outlets
More Free-Market Model Surgery Centers & Direct Primary Care Providers
FMMA Founders
Meet the relentlessly independent thinkers who founded the FMMA and started a movement that has spread across the country.
The Pillars Of The FMMA
The Pillars of the FMMA were created due to the wildly varying definitions of free market and transparency. As this movement grows, many want to utilize the work of true free market warriors to create new programs, products and schemes that are not truly free market or transparent. All members agree to abide by the literal definition of the Pillars, and the spirit and intent with which they were created.
FMMA Pillars
Transparent Prices
Comprehensive, up-front, bundled prices for every procedure and service are publicly published and 100% patient- and plan-agnostic.
Value Shopping & Comparison
Patients can shop providers, compare prices and arrive at a value that is right for them. Price is not the product. Care is the product.
Agreement
Patients and providers (and vendors, when applicable) agree on a procedure, mutually beneficial price and up-front payment.
Anti-Free Market Practices
Healthcare today is riddled with deceptive, smoke-and-mirror tactics that are highly antithetical to the principles of a free market. Below are just a few, and they are good examples of the exact practices the FMMA does not tolerate and is working against.
Price Tampering
A consumer cannot determine the value of the purchasing choices they make without price honesty. In an open, free market, consumers can readily access necessary information to choose healthcare providers based on value, which can only be known when both price and quality are known.
Price Inflation
Many large insurance carriers, brokers and healthcare systems have conspired to artificially raise prices of provided care. This allows them to not only sell “discounts” on inflated prices, but also realize percentage-based income, on a percent of savings, claims or premium, which incentivizes price gouging and games.
Selling Discounts
Health plans have been forced to rely on PPOs, networks or specialty discount vendors to give them access to a discount off “billed charges” to reduce the truly outrageous charges mentioned above, contributing to the rising cost of care. Selling access to a discount – where the carrier benefits from the price being high – puts them at odds with the best interests of the buyers and sellers of healthcare.
Hiding Prices
Our current healthcare system employs a magician’s bag full of tricks to hide real prices from buyers. Costs will never decrease until consumers can make fully educated, value-based decisions about their care. In a free market system, a competitive price can be knowable, publishable and complete regardless of the patient.
Multiple Bills
Many patients are accustomed to receiving many separate bills. These surprise bills may be from the facility, surgeon, anesthesiologist, imaging, pharmacy or many other providers – some of which [SURPRISE!] aren’t within that protected network of “reduced costs.” The FMMA believes in complete, transparent, up-front pricing.
Illusory Freedom of Choice
Carriers use networks, different plans, PPOs and other illusions of the freedom of a free-market or freedom of choice, when in reality patients are stuck with a pre-determined outcome, and end up with essentially the same result.
Podcast, Videos & More
Check out the FMMA’s media library, including our podcast, videos and more.
FMMA Founders
Meet the relentlessly independent thinkers who founded the FMMA and started a movement that has spread across the country.
Success Stories
Across the United States, providers, patients and payers are forging a new path in free-market medicine. See just a few of their stories here.