Salaried physicians earned the same regardless of how much treatment they ordered. Their decisions were unaffected by their economic prospects. And obviously, even a successful initiative toward salaried practice could not take effect overnight. Ultimately the only means to ensure that doctors and patients stay on the same side may be to divorce physicians' decisions from economics altogether. What an HMO does to doctors when it has too many.
Patients are suspicious of the profit motive in health care.
Never, ever call your company for-profit. Instead refer soothingly to its investor-owned status. Management by inconvenience. When an HMO takes the charges a doctor submits, analyzes them as if the patient had been treated in a less expensive way, then pays only for the less expensive approach. Hospitals furiously resisted DRGs at first.