Health Affairs, 23, no. 2 (2004): 69 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.23.2.69 © 2004 by Project HOPE	New Online   Pay Cuts For Medicare Docs   Access To Care Woes   Public Coverage More Efficient   Empowering Consumers

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Physicians

PROLOGUE

Challenges For Physician Practice

PROLOGUE: The ambivalence of the medical profession toward third-party payment is legendary. In the early days of Blue Shield, Michigan doctors staged a boycott of the upstart prepayment plan, posting signs in their office waiting rooms that they would not accept checks from Blue Shield. But when a plan representative made weekly visits to these doctors offering cash for the services received by members, they took it. Similarly, organized medicine vigorously fought a proposed program of public health insurance for the elderly two decades later but quietly acquiesced when the checks started rolling in.

The reason for medicine’s predicament was . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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