Image: Melinda Beck
Concierge care may sound like luxury, but for women over 50, it’s starting to look like the only way to be heard.
I wanted to throw my phone across the room. I’d been trying to schedule a visit with a new physician for weeks. Every doctor I called was either booked eight months out or no longer accepted my insurance. And this wasn’t for a routine checkup—it was because I’d collapsed on my kitchen floor after what my doctor called a routine endoscopy.
The doctor who performed the procedure told me to drink more water. Days later, I was in the ER with a punctured spleen. I’ll spare you the harrowing events that followed, including the gaslighting and the lack of accountability.
That’s when I started looking into concierge care.
Not because I wanted luxury treatment, but because I didn’t want to die while on hold.
Concierge medicine offers personalized, proactive care that runs from expensive to astronomical. The typical membership fees can run $150 to $300/month, with VIP/luxury practices at $2,000 to $10,000+/month. It’s a $7 billion industry projected to hit $13 billion by 2030—fueled by frustration with a system that keeps failing patients, especially women.
But I hesitated. Since when do you have to pay extra to not die?
And yet, like so many women over 50, I’ve been gaslit, dismissed, and given a “just drink water” prescription. This wasn’t just a one off. Menopause? Deal with it. Brain fog? You’re getting old. HRT? You don’t need it.
I became outraged to think how I might need to pay that kind of money to have someone take me seriously. Concierge care started to look less like a luxury and more like a survival tactic. But it also raised a deeper question: What kind of system makes us pay a premium just to be heard?
What We’re Really Paying For
With concierge care, doctors take fewer patients and offer faster access. You get same-week appointments, direct texts, even house calls. And they’re no longer buried in insurance paperwork. They get to practice medicine the way they imagined in med school.
Without concierge care, the average wait time to see a doctor is 38 days—and that’s optimistic. For urgent needs like cancer screenings or cardiac consults, it’s often months.
Even with concierge membership, you’re still paying insurance premiums. Most middle class individuals shell out nearly $9,000 annually; families pay closer to $26,000. Add concierge fees on top, and the math gets brutal.
When Your Doctor Disappears
By 2036, the U.S. could be short nearly 86,000 physicians. Burnout and an aging population are driving doctors out of traditional practice. They’re exhausted from extended hours, insurance compliance, and demanding patient loads. Many have been sucked up into big hospital systems, and they’re not allowed to practice medicine the way they want to because they have quotas to fill. Others are fleeing to concierge models, where they can breathe—and earn.
But here’s the catch: When doctors disappear into boutique care, the rest of us are left scrambling. Those who can afford it get faster, better access. Those who can’t? They’re stuck with overburdened, understaffed systems.
Lori Darcy knows first-hand what this is like. After being diagnosed with C. diff, she couldn’t get a call back from her doctor, let alone an appointment. Desperate, she signed up for concierge care at $500 per month. The results were immediate: calls returned, symptoms addressed, coordination with specialists and pharmacies. Suddenly, like magic, she was getting the care she needed to get better.
She doesn’t regret the decision. Her life was on the line.
Who Gets To Be Saved?
“Concierge medicine is fundamentally unjust,” said Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.,head of the medical ethics division of NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
It’s a business model, not a health care model. And those who benefit most are already privileged. These practices disproportionately serve fewer Black, Hispanic, and Medicaid patients.
Darcy, who is white, acknowledges her privilege. Her concierge doctor responds within minutes. She gets answers. She gets care. But she admits it’s not sustainable long term.
The Dilemma: The Moral Math No One Wants to Do
So here’s the moral calculus: Health care shouldn’t be a luxury, and having access to it might mean the difference between life and death.
Should anyone have to choose between paying high fees or being ignored?
There’s no clear data showing concierge care leads to better outcomes. But timely access, responsiveness, and reduced stress? That matters.
You can’t fault someone for doing what it takes to survive in a broken system. But we shouldn’t accept a system that makes survival a luxury only few can afford.
For now, I’ve opted out. I’m building my own care team—one doctor at a time, booked a year in advance. My spleen is healing, but it shouldn’t have taken this much pain and frustration to be taken seriously.
This Isn’t Health Care. It’s a Paywall
Concierge care doesn’t fix health care. It exposes everything that’s broken. It shows us exactly who gets seen—and who has to fight to stay alive.
Women over 50 know this better than anyone. We’ve been sidelined, misdiagnosed, and dismissed. If I’d had concierge care, I might’ve avoided an ER stay and 11 hours of invasive tests.
It’s time to ask why care depends on your credit limit. Why survival now comes with a subscription fee. Why we’re still begging to be heard.
We shouldn’t have to buy our way into being believed.
If the only people guaranteed a doctor’s attention are those who can afford the cover charge, then we’ve stopped pretending this is health care. It’s a velvet-rope system dressed up in scrubs.
But is opting out a betrayal or a survival tactic?
If more of us are forced to pay to be taken seriously, then it’s not just our bodies on the line—it’s the soul of medicine itself.
Staying silent is no longer an option.
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