The Press and Health Care

An angry physician telephoned me recently. Just back from a hard day with his patients, he said, he had read — I'd say, misread — a newspaper article I had written about health care. Though he wasn't mentioned in the article, he wanted to know, as he more or less put it, why the press is hostile to his profession.He explained that he does not defraud Medicare or Medicaid, does not subject his patients to needless operations or engage in any of the many other practices for which medicine is now routinely lambasted in print and on the airwaves. . . .