Membership in the Guild is available only to the members of the Associations that join the Guild. The strength of the Guild comes through the marriage of the organizations of medicine and the organizations of labor. It will not become a substitute for organized medicine, or an alternative to the membership services that the organization of medicine already offers. We view our efforts as an enhancement to the services that organized medicine offers to its members. We want to enlist the strengths of organized labor in support of the reestablishment of the doctor-patient relationship, the doctor's control of the treatment of the patient, and the preeminent importance of quality patient care.
Organized labor constitutes the largest private purchaser of healthcare services in the nation.
We want to work with organized labor in a partnership that insures the quality of care given to its members. First, a substantial amount of effort has been put into the organization of the Guild. We have spoken to podiatric and medical associations on national, state, and county levels in over twenty-five states. Each of the affiliated Associations moved the question of affiliation through their internal processes. This has been successful on the scope that I described above.