The future of medical practice

Managed care of some kind will dominate the future of health care, but the unresolved crucial question concerns ownership of the managed care plans. An investor-owned managed care industry now holds sway, but I do not expect it to last very long. In the long run, physicians must be in charge of medical care, but they must live within budgets and be accountable to payers and to their patients. The only solution that makes sense to me is one based on multiple local physician networks, organized on a not-for-profit basis. I predict that staff and group-model HMOs will be the mainstay of the medical care delivery system within a few decades.