Economic credentialing: your money or your life!

The economic overhaul of health care in America is restructuring the business of medicine, and with it the relationship between physician and patient. Previously accustomed to thinking primarily about the best interests of each patient, the physician now finds this traditional loyalty in conflict with competing concerns, including those of government, business, and insurers who watch with alarm the relentless rise in their health care expenditures. And there are competing interests of hospitals, health maintenance organizations, and other provider-institutions who find their survival threatened by high-powered competition and increasingly stringent resource limits, and interests of other physicians and their patients whose health needs compete for limited health care dollars.