It takes more than perfect medical boards and an ability to operate without sleep to be a successful young doctor these days.
Medical students in America are graduating into the wold and woolly world of floundering managed care companies, and they need a healthy dose of composure to deal with it. This week's demise of Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, one of America's model HMOs, is just the latest in a series of managed care disasters.
The world didn't get the Y2K bug, but Harvard Pilgrim seems to have caught a full-blown $177 million flu. This problem echo trends all over the country that older doctors have been complaining about for years.
But the real question is what they do to the idealism and enthusiasm that brings students to medicine in the first place.
Life as a young doctor in Managed Care America, in the second hour of the Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
