When the White House and Congress were struggling last year to keep the cost of health-care reform from exploding, they got most of the industry to ante up. Pharma agreed to give up $80 billion in revenue over the next decade, hospitals kicked in $155 billion in foregone Medicare and Medicaid payments, and medical-device makers grudgingly agreed to a $20 billion tax. But one big player refused to put any money on the table: doctors. The American Medical Association pledged to support health-care reform only if its members' incomes didn't take a hit.


That doctors demanded protection for their wallets strikes Howard Brody, a family physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch, as "ethically questionable," and not only because he thinks doctors have a moral obligation to help get the nation's health-care bill under control. The bigger problem is that "doctors rip off the system with inappropriate care," says Brody. An estimated one fifth to one third of U.S. health-care costs, at least $500 billion a year, goes toward tests and treatments that do not benefit patients—routine CT scans in the ER, antibiotics for colds, Pap tests for women who do not have a cervix, and …

"We noticed that the doctors and nurses responding to these seizures were not remaining calm," he said. "That serves dramatic purposes, but it's not the way we'd educate the family members of our patients, which is that at the time of the seizure, put something under their heads, put them on their sides and don't panic."