Political war on Medical

Doctors who own independent practices sometimes band together to provide a bulk offering of services, at a collectively negotiated rate, for third-party payers such as large health insurance carriers. These groups are called “independent practice associations,” or IPAs, and they’ve been around since the 1950s. IPAs provide tangible value for physicians and patients alike: Doctors get a middleman to deal with the insurance bureaucracies, and patients get access to a wide range of health care providers at discounted prices. But as S.M. Oliva explains in our December issue, thanks to the ever-expanding mission of antitrust regulators, the associations are also under constant attack from the federal government.