ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how America was on its way to a major change in its system of health care delivery through the intervention of large health care conglomerates. It describes problems in the social control of medical practice. The chapter explains how "countervailing powers" have limited the power and authority of physicians in American society. Public dissatisfaction with the medical profession and its provision of health care in the United States is generally viewed as having largely economic and social origins. By the mid-twentieth century, the medical profession in the United States stood at the height of its professional power and prestige, enjoying great public trust. Internally, the medical profession has been weakened through an oversupply of doctors and the fragmentation and lack of success in resisting government controls of its labor union, the American Medical Association (AMA). One of the most extensive changes in health care delivery, reducing the authority of physicians, has been the introduction of managed care.
