Can you reinvent primary care within the insurance model? Everyone says 'No.' Tom Lee says 'Yes.'  Dr. Lee is the fifth physician-entrepreneur to appear on this list (Shlain, Bliss, Parkinson, Moore) -- and the only one with a business model that still embraces insurance.  Lee's 1Life Healthcare may look like a "concierge model" from the website -- high tech, high touch care, delivered to a panel of patient-members -- but Dr. Lee's 1Life only charges patients $150 a year to join, and "everything else is co-pays and insurance." There are no other out of-pocket fees. We're not sure how he can afford to do this, and he's not saying much. Of course capitalization helps: Earlier this year 1Life raised $8 million from Benchmark Capital, the backers of eBay infamously profiled in the book, eBoys.  He clearly has plans to scale. (His anchor practice is One Medical Group.) Dr. Lee himself doesn't spend much time with patients anymore. A previous co-founder of ePocrates, he's got a knack for IT, and is flexing that side of his brain building the technology platform that we suspect makes it all possible. He also has a habit for provocation. When Dr. Lee blogs, he tosses hand grenades; like his notion that clinical practice could go the way of the newspaper business, being totally dis-intermediated by online delivery. Such ideas spur his peers to think -- about new ways to innovate themselves onto safer ground.

Blogging on iHealthBeat: Commodifying Content Through IT: Could Physicians Be Next?