Why some patients pay up to $50,000 a year for ‘concierge medicine’

Money can buy lots of stuff. But one of its greatest perks is the ability to make life more frictionless: A first-class airline ticket will expedite you through the airport and onto the plane. An upgraded theme park ticket will allow you to cut to the front of the line.

But if you have a few thousand dollars to make your trip to Disney World more enjoyable, why not use that money for something far more consequential? Like skipping the incredibly long line at your doctor’s office.

“If you look at it from the perspective of people who have high income, or relatively high income,” says Asaf Bitton, a primary care doctor and associate professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard Medical School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “$2,000 or $5,000 a year is something you’d spend on a vacation. So I’ve heard people say: ‘Why wouldn’t I spend that on my health?’”