What If Physicians Attempted to Be More Entrepreneurial?

It’s always an accomplishment, as a writer, to crack a new or different kind of publication. In my case, I never expected to get anything into a medical publication, so I’m feeling good about having a letter to the editor in the most recent issue of Family Practice Management magazine. The letter responds to a question posed in an editorial a couple months previous in the magazine about how the various powers that be would react if more physicians went "cash only"–in other words, went around the insurers to market directly to patients. This is a subject I wrote about earlier this year in my BusinessWeek.com small-business column in which I profiled a physician who is prospering by refusing to do business with the insurance companies.

I can remember back in the 1950s and 1960s when physicians dominated the economics of the health-care world, and the American Medical Association (AMA) was the premier professional organization in the world, credited with protecting the physician cartel. How times have changed.