When this escalates to the point that care can no longer be provided, physicians must be permitted to dose their doors. Some would mistakenly call that a strike. Unions offer doctors a chance to recapture their profession, to turn the voice of one into the voice of many. For the private practitioner, unions offer a wide array of benefits. They can aid in developing public relations campaigns to educate the public and expose the problems of managed care.
Unions can provide private practitioners with access to sympathetic legislators.
Doctors unions such as the Union of American Physicians and Dentists provide these benefits and more to their members. Hippocrates could never have imagined the adversity managed care could cause, yet he would surely have wanted physicians to do everything in their power to continue treating the sick even if that meant joining doctors unions. Letting those who look at the bottom line and not at patients to dictate how we practice medicine violates our oath. Doing what is necessary to assure that we are able to provide quality care for our patients does not. Chief executive officers of health care organizations earn millions of dollars by depriving patients of care.