Late last month, supporters of the newly established Free Market Medical Association (FMMA) converged on Oklahoma City for the organization's first ever annual conference. As the name suggests, the organization is intended to bring doctors and providers together to share ideas and defend "the practice of free market medicine without the intervention of government or other third parties." Given the sorts of reforms American health care needs these days, the FMMA's entry onto the national stage is a welcome one.

Along with noting the FMMA's existence, there's also a reason worth teasing out for why the FMMA held its first conference in Oklahoma City. The short answer is "it's where the FMMA's organizers are based," but a more complete answer is it's where some very interesting free-market business models are being put into practice.

Advocacy of free market health care is the longtime passion of Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma [and the FMMA]. The center began to post fixed prices for common medical procedures years ago, and has provoked widespread admiration within the medical profession for efficiency, reasonable cost and frequent support for those who are less fortunate.

At the Surgery Center, Dr. Keith Smith and Dr. Steve Lantier have established an operational structure and market-oriented billing as explicit alternatives to the third-party payer systems that now dominate U.S. health care.

The center posts online an up-front price for medical procedures in diverse areas of practice, including orthopedics, ear/nose/throat, general surgery, urology, ophthalmology, foot and ankle, and reconstructive plastics. In all, a total of 112 procedures are listed.

Translation? Transparent pricing plus direct pay works out to a pretty good business model premised on competition and service. Price transparency is huge because it's generally pretty difficult to price shop in the U.S. health market, in part because the third-party payer system disincentivizes it, and because many providers aren't willing to publish those prices. That makes it difficult to force prices down through competition. Posting prices should be common practice in the industry; unfortunately, it's not.

It's good to see folks in the movement getting organized when it comes to demonstrating that, yes, free-market reforms to health care do exist and can work. In the coming months, Show-Me readers will hear a lot more about free-market health care alternatives. Stay tuned.