Listen to this article

The federal government may feel the future of health care is the Affordable Care Act.

Some in New Jersey have a different vision — one where patients pay out of pocket for just about everything. And they pay a group of doctors and medical practices that are so fed up with the insurance-based system that they are opting to go it alone.

The Free Market Health Group, a Parsippany-based consulting firm, is at the heart of the movement.

Free Market helps physician practices venture outside health insurance networks and contract directly with self-funded employers looking for affordable medical care for their employees.

Founder Daniel Goldberg launched the new company last fall, and he said his clients are physicians in New Jersey and elsewhere in the country that want an alternative to the reimbursement rates and administrative paperwork that membership in an insurance network entails.

“We work with physicians who are opting to leave the insurance model, and we serve as consultants for them,” Goldberg said. “We connect them to patients and employers who are looking to pay cash for medical services.”

A typical Goldberg client is a large ambulatory surgical center whose physicians cover a range of surgical specialties, including orthopedics and ophthalmology.

The Free Market Group helps them develop prices for their surgical procedures.

“We make sure their prices are in line with what others in the cash-pay field are charging, so they are competitively priced,” he said. “We take these prices for all the procedures done in the surgery center and put them together, almost as a menu, and we bring them to the employer. We then set up direct contracts between the physician group or the surgery center and the employer.”

Besides self-funded employer groups looking for quality, lower-cost health care, Goldberg said his company also advises individual consumers who are paying cash out of pocket for surgical procedures.

The movement is a result of high-deductible health plans becoming more common: Since consumers are spending their own money for much of their care in these plans, they are motivated to go shopping for health care bargains.