How Power Undermined the Medical Profession

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

FORTHCOMING from Cambridge University Press

Over the course of the twentieth century, the medical profession in the United States aggrandized power and profit and is now watching it begin to slip away. Although there is no single explanation for this meteoric rise and gradual decline, this chapter argues that one factor has been the profession’s own success. As medical science advanced, it afforded doctors increasing authority and, acting through professional associations, they used this authority to shape the law to protect their turf and their profits. And it also had a terrible side effect. Because buried within the rise of professional autonomy and power was also the profession’s sharp decline—a decline that may hold important lessons for reformists focused on building a new era of the legal profession.

Keywords

medical profession, legal reform, corporate practice, American Medical Society, health insurance, Medicare, licensure, private equity, corporatization

Publication Title

Rethinking the Lawyer's Monopoly: Access to Justice and the Future of Legal Services

Full text not available in Penn Law Legal Scholarship Repository.

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