ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand how that happened and to identify the kinds of organizational relationships that give the health-care industry its current dynamic. The international movement toward "modern medical science" provided an opportunity for one group of physicians, organized as the American Medical Association to bring a "managed" approach to the development of medicine. As support for modern medical science grew in most industrialized countries, momentum built to make it the center of a national health-care system, with the state guaranteeing access to its services. A high level of post-war prosperity in the US led business and the federal government to think expansively about health-care innovation. In 1953, the Supreme Court ruled that requiring doctors to belong to their county medical association in order to have the right to practice in local hospitals was a violation of their civil rights. The new political climate for racial struggles was indeed an ironic outcome of Cold War politics.
