In the societies where such unchecked powers were allowed to flourish, the human wreckage and societal ruin is still considered apocalyptic. Therefore, we must pool all of our intellectual capitol, conviction of purpose and compassion for humanity. By doing so, we will provide the mandate our lawmakers need to right the wrongs of managed care. This courageous group of 29 physicians actually responded to a unilateral, arbitrary change in their contracts by managed care companies, which reduced their rate of reimbursement. The terms of the contracts were so repressive that they had individually elected to resign.
Physicians have no bargaining power with managed care contracting.
All physicians have the right to resign from exceedingly bad contracts, and this is what happened with the Federation of Certified Surgeons. These billion-dollar managed care companies have huge advantages over physicians. They control and market through exclusive contracting, and they have access to expensive legal advice. When they fail to control a physician's practice, the next step is to misuse anti-trust laws and manipulate the Justice Department to bludgeon doctors into submission. The very anti-trust laws originally enacted to protect individual consumers against monopolistic firms, such as Standard Oil and U. S. Steel, are now being used by insurance companies to intimidate individual practitioners.