I suspect that telemedicine, “A new kind of house call” (Page 1, March 4) will take on a larger role in primary care because insurance for primary care has become too expensive for many people.

Soon patients will be consulting the telemedicine doctors not only for the flu, but also for many other symptoms like headaches, earaches and stomach complaints.

Medical technology advances so rapidly that it is likely that telemedicine doctors will eventually be replaced by “robot doctors” that will make diagnoses as good as the telemedicine doctor — or even better!

This will represent the final stage in the depersonalization of health care, which began about a decade ago when insurers lowered the fees they paid primary care doctors forcing them to increase the number of patients they treated in order to survive financially.

Many patients complain that a visit to their primary care doctor is a hurried, business-like affair. Not only do they have less time to discuss their symptoms, but there is no time to develop satisfying personal relationships.

Insurance companies will probably offer special low price insurance for patients who use telemedicine because by paying out less for office visits their profits will increase.

And, since many people consider rent, food, clothing, and paying for automobile expenses more urgent than health insurance, they may decide one day to most of their primary care from a telemedicine doctor. Or even a robot doctor.

If this prediction for the future of primary care comes true it will be because physicians will have failed to eliminate insurers’ interference with the practice of medicine.

Lawmakers need to take a futuristic look at how insurers are shaping and depersonalizing the future of primary care.

Edward Volpintesta, MD

Bethel