A hospital board president told Dr. Jennifer Allen he would eat 40 kinds of crow if her Direct Primary Care practice worked. She now has three clinics, 14 employees, and around 2,000 patients across Hermann, Washington, and O'Fallon, Missouri. She was a nurse and nurse practitioner for 18 years first, and a patient paid her way through medical school.

Rent at Mid-South DPC is 800 dollars a month for 1,250 square feet that used to be a donut drive through, then a tanning salon, then a children's boutique. Dr. Ashlee Hendry's husband did the build out in the evenings while she worked out her 30 day notice. She passed 200 patients four months after opening, and every piece of art on the walls is hers.

Dr. Tiffanny Blythe priced Blue Lotus Family Medicine so low she barely covered her living expenses, until the furnace broke and the math stopped working. She raised 85 percent of her panel from $50 to $75 with three months of notice and lost a handful of people. The higher price funds a scholarship program with no application and no gatekeeping, where a patient can pay as little as $5 a month.