Anyone work for one of the chains?

[Johns]

For licensure to work you would first have to put an end to in camera meetings, then publicly broadcast all meetings and open the entire set of accounting books on line to membership , check by check by check, right down to petty cash expenses and receipts, plus record the voting and put the entire archive of minutes of the meetings on line and the minutes of the meetings would have to be compared to the live recordings of the actual meetings.

Not sure which meetings are being referred to, but licensing is a state government function, not an association or society. The meetings are open door (I've been to many), the minutes are published on-line, and all the funds collected go into the general treasury. There is no petty cash, no dues, and no membership, just as there is no membership into the bureau of motor vehicle licensing. You pay for your license, that's it.

[tigerlilly]

Just curious...are you seeing mainly eyemed,davis and spectera ( Corp. owned vision plan)patients or are you getting many private pay?

We do very little insurance, and what we do is such a pita that I wish we didn't. Because of our business model, most patients can pay oop and still come out ahead with turning in for an out-of-network reimbursement. We don't file a lot, maybe a dozen claims or fewer a week, so the advent of the affiliate plan hasn't changed us much. Granted, our lease dr doesn't take anything, so other locations where the doc accepts a lot of insurance probably do more insurance-based business.