The concept of doctors unionizing has disturbed some, while others feel this is the silver bullet that will restore the medical profession to its rightful place. Let me share some thoughts with you regarding this dilemma. Incentives to physicians to offer less care, less diagnostic testing, and less referrals jeopardizes the ethical practice of patient-focused medicine. Finally, large monopolistic managed care entities strip our medical decision-making privileges and ask us to work at or below our cost. I share this frustration but have serious reservations about unionization.
Unions are by definition self-serving, and appro pri ately so.
They offer leverage to workers who might otherwise be forced to work in substandard conditions for inadequate wages. They are meant to protect the welfare and interests of the worker first and foremost. A doctors union as defined by the AMA would be formed to protect patients interests and would not include the right to strike. A union that is formed to protect a third party, and which vows not to use it s most effective weapon, sounds like a joke to me. In addition, a doctors union will be seen, and portrayed by our detractors, as a self-serving special interest group intent on driving up health care costs to enrich the physician.