Before Direct Primary Care had a name, Dr. Clint Flanagan was selling monthly membership medicine in Longmont, Colorado for $99 a month. He opened his own clinic 15.1 miles from a former employer to clear a non-compete, met Dr. Garrison Bliss over a long dinner in Denver, and grew Nextera Healthcare into more than 100 affiliated clinics.

Dr. Stephanie Phillips charges $75 a month, flat, for every patient in Royston, Georgia, a town of 2,700 people. She also signed her own alma mater, Emmanuel University, to pay $47 per student per semester for 750 students, which brings her three to five extra visits a day. Public Service Loan Forgiveness is what finally let her leave the VA after nine years.

Dr. Tami Singh's panel hit over 4,000 patients in seven years before a hospital bought her physician owned group and started undercoding her billing. She quit, spent six weeks in Bali, and came home to open Aspire Health in a furnished room inside a plastic surgery office. Five years later her panel is closed, her mother handles billing, and three virtual staff in the Philippines run the phones.