Private Equity and the Corruption of Medicine

When managed care first began to make inroads into my city about 1986, I had been in the private practice of medicine for 10 years. I had started from zero and knew nothing of the “business” of medicine. I hired two young medical assistants who were hardworking, smart, and dedicated, and off we traveled up the steep learning curve, building a medical home for our patients from scratch. No one knew the term “medical home” back then — it hadn’t yet been invented by policy wonks. But as we grew, at times we were overwhelmed and stymied by the ever-changing rules and regulations from Medicare and other insurers.