Ilove Montana for reasons that draw me to the state at least once a year: friends, mountains, wildlife, dry air, and fishing, to name a few. Now I have a new reason to love it: Healthcare freedom.

Earlier this year, Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill that promises to expand a health care model known as Direct Patient Care (DPC). Increasingly fed up with red tape, paperwork and meddlesome third-party rules—especially since passage of Obamacare—a growing number of physicians are opting to bypass both government and insurance companies. Under a DPC arrangement, patients pay doctors directly through monthly membership fees or for specific services rendered.

(Note: In other states, where this delivery model is more limited than it now is in Montana, it is commonly referred to as "Direct Primary Care.")

Monthly fees for membership-based DPC practices average well under $100 and they typically cover all in-office appointments, services, tests, and online consultations. In the July 2021 issue of Reason magazine, Dr. Lee Gross of Epiphany Health DPC in Florida remarks that "About 85 percent of all health care delivery in the country can be managed at a primary care level, so that is really the bulk of health care delivery in our country."