Health insurers in several big cities will take some pain out of doctor visits in 2016. The plans will offer free visits to primary care doctors in their networks.

You read that right. Doctor visits without copays. Or coinsurance. And no expensive deductible to pay off first either.

In Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and more than a dozen other markets, people seeking coverage through the insurance exchanges can choose health plans providing free doctor visits, a benefit once considered unthinkable.

The change is rolling out in a limited number of plans following reports that high copays and deductibles have discouraged many Americans who signed up for private coverage the past two years from using their new insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

Insurers say they hope encouraging visits to doctors will benefit members and their bottom lines by catching illnesses early before they become harder and more expensive to treat. For example, prescribing antibiotics promptly to a patient with pneumonia could avoid a lengthy hospitalization costing tens of thousands of dollars.

In addition, the policy could also cut down on the use of more expensive urgent care centers and emergency rooms for cases that aren’t critical.

In most states, Dec. 15 was the deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1, though people have until Jan. 31 to enroll for 2016.

Two new health insurers, Harken Health, an independently operated affiliate of UnitedHealthcare, and Zoom+ are offering unlimited free primary care visits at company-owned clinics. Harken operates in Chicago and Atlanta. Zoom+ is based in Portland, Ore.

Down south, Florida Blue, the state’s largest insurer, has health plans in Miami-Dade and nine other counties where low-income members buying plans can also get two free primary care visits per year.

California-based Molina Healthcare, is offering not only free primary care visits in some plans, but also free visits to specialists in Florida, Texas and five other states.

The no-fee visits go beyond the preventive services, such as immunizations and screenings, that all insurers must provide under Obamacare without charging a copay, even when a deductible hasn’t been met.

Health policy experts say the new approach sets the insurers apart in crowded insurance markets and may attract younger, healthier people who don’t have relationships with doctors.

“This is a great development … and shows how the market is trying to innovate,” said Katherine Hempstead, director of coverage for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“Consumers should find this very appealing. … It might be like ‘a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,’ ” she said, quoting a line from the Mary Poppins song. “People are not going to grouse as much about cost sharing later if they are getting something free first.”

Consumer advocates applaud the trend, which they say underscores why people need to look beyond the monthly premium when shopping for a plan. “It’s a smart move to reduce financial barriers to basic outpatient care to help patients manage their health,” said Lydia Mitts, a senior policy analyst at Families USA. “I hope other health plans will realize removing financial barriers to primary care doctors is a smart direction for patients and for the plans.”

The health plans offering free doctor visits are typically among the lowest-priced plans in many markets, according to a Kaiser Health News review of plans sold on the exchanges.

Some insurers can offer free visits because they operate health clinics staffed by salaried physicians. That’s the case at Harken Health, which has four primary care clinics in Chicago and six in Atlanta for its members to use for unlimited visits. Harken also offers members access to a doctor by telephone and Internet. “We are creating unfettered access between the care team and the patients,” said Tom Vanderheyden, CEO of Harken Health. “We think it’s a significant differentiation.” Harken also offers free yoga and cooking classes.

Patients with easy access to Harken’s clinics should be able to avoid trips to urgent care centers, retail clinics and emergency rooms, and develop a deeper relationship with their primary care doctor, Vanderheyden said. “Better access … should mean better outcomes and happier people.”

Dave Sanders, CEO of Zoom+ and a physician, said offering free doctor visits at its modern clinics, should help attract young enrollees. “We are unabashedly focused on the millennial generation,” he said.

To that end, Zoom+ lets members make appointments using a smartphone app. The company’s doctors emphasize changing diets before prescribing drugs.

Dr. Craig McDougall of ZOOM+ talks about food as medicine with a patient visiting one of the insurer’s clinics in Portland, Ore. Courtesy of Zoom hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of Zoom

Zoom+ has run clinics in the Portland area for the past year, but it has never offered an insurance plan before. Members can get free care at the clinics or Zoom’s freestanding emergency room.

Under the health law, marketplace plans must cover a certain percentage of a member’s health costs with the amount varying based on gold, silver or bronze tiers. “What we have done is to spend the resources on primary care,” Sanders said.

Zoom+ also offers free mental health visits and one free dental visit for a cleaning.

Florida Blue, the state’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan, developed a new product for 2016 called myBlue which offers two free primary care doctor visits and then charges $1 a visit thereafter, $3 visits for specialists, free routine lab tests and free diabetic supplies. The myBlue plan was created to help people whose incomes qualify for the highest cost-sharing subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

To offer such benefits, Florida Blue developed a smaller network of doctors, hospitals and pharmacies so it could better control costs. But to encourage enrollment in Miami-Dade County it recently partnered with three CliniSanitas medical clinics, which primarily serve the Hispanic audience in the area. The plan is also available across South Florida, and counties around Tampa and Orlando.

Jon Urbanek, a senior vice president for Florida Blue, said the new plan is intended to increase the insurer’s market share. He said participating providers in the myBlue products are not necessarily paid less than other doctors but their pay is more closely tied to reaching certain quality targets such as cancer and cholesterol screenings. In 6 of 10 counties where it’s available, the myBlue product offers the lowest premium. “We think our pricing positions us to do very well,” Urbanek said.

Molina Healthcare is offering zero copays for unlimited primary care doctor visits for one of its silver-tier plans for 2016. Unlike Florida Blue, it says it offers free doctor visits in its plans without using a narrow network of doctors and hospitals. “We really want folks to get value from their premium dollar and not have any barriers for care,” said Lisa Rubino, senior vice president at Molina.

Molina offers the zero copay doctor plans in Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

This story was produced through collaboration between NPR and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization. Neither the foundation nor the news service is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Guinea is set to celebrate with concerts and fireworks Wednesday, following the World Health Organization’s announcement that the country is now officially Ebola-free.

On Tuesday, WHO declared that after two years and over 2,500 deaths, the Ebola epidemic in Guinea has officially ended. The announcement marks the passing of two 21-day incubation periods since the last person to have contracted Ebola — a baby girl called Noubia — was cured of the virus.

“Of course people are happy,” says Safiatou L. Diallo, a World Bank operations officer based in Conakry, Guinea. “But the mood here is also very humble. People have lost their entire families, and we are still remembering and mourning that.”

The announcement in Guinea is a milestone, because “this is the first time that all three countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — have stopped the original chains of transmission that were responsible for starting this devastating outbreak two years ago,” said WHO regional director for Africa Dr. Matshidiso Moeti in a statement.

“But at the same time it’s important to emphasize that this is not the end of Ebola forever,” Dr. Daniel Lucey, a professor of immunology at Georgetown University, who has worked at Ebola treatment wards in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

For the next three months, Guinea will be in a state of heightened surveillance to make sure the virus doesn’t re-emerge as it has done twice in Liberia. “The virus in some cases can persist in the semen of men who’ve survived the infection for up to nine or even 12 months,” Lucey explains. People can also contract the virus from animals.

Plus, in some survivors, the after-effects can include blurred vision, hearing loss and joint pain.”Clearly now is not the time to slow down,” Lucey says. It’s a time to build up health infrastructure, and continue developing and testing vaccines and anti-viral treatments to prepare for any future flare-ups, he says.

The World Bank, WHO and other aid groups have said they will continue to work with the governments in Guinea as well as Sierra Leone and Liberia to provide survivors with medical care as well as counseling to help them return to normal life.

Diallo from the World Bank points out that the epidemic has also left hundreds of children orphaned. Several local associations as well as international groups are now working to find homes for these children and get them back to school, she says. “But unfortunately this may take a long time. And they will need lots of support — they will be affected forever by the epidemic.”

There is also the issue of stigma against survivors, Diallo adds. Over the next year, public campaigns explaining that it’s safe to live and work around Ebola survivors, to shake their hands or breathe the same air will be crucial.

The epidemic had been especially difficult to contain in Guinea. As NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reported earlier this year, mistrust, anger and denial in parts of the country hindered efforts to cure the infected and curb the spread of illness.

“No one expected it to be so hard or take so long to stop this disease. It just demolished entire villages and families,” Diallo says. “It will take some time to rebuild.”

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