Desperate Doctors and Antitrust Laws: the Best Ways for Lawmakers to Simulate Physician Collective Bargaining

Not only do rising health insurance premiums make us cringe—so do the mistakes of overworked doctors who are trying to make ends meet in the face of a broken healthcare financing system. The unfairness in healthcare financing—that is, the stranglehold that a few powerful insurance companies often wield over doctors’ reimbursements—has prompted some creative solutions, including two recent bills in the California Legislature and one in the New York Assembly. The bills aimed to loosen healthcare antitrust laws and give physicians greater bargaining power against insurance companies. Currently, physicians cannot collectively bargain, so their legal choices for improving profits include: garnering better contract terms through personal negotiation, banding together to use federally approved methods, or squeezing in more patients per day. The prospect of doctors over-scheduling to see more patients each day has lawmakers worried. In a recent example of why that worry is justified, “assem-