The doctor likes to picture himself as a freewheeling individualist. But from the day he enters medical school he must learn—if he wants to succeed—to play ball with a tight bureaucracy. Mr. Chase, who has reported on various aspects of medical economics in other magazines, here explores the anatomy of power in American medicine at the grass-roots level of the county medical society.
Last June a forty-one-year-old obstetrician, Dr. Joseph Garabedian, died on Staten Island, a borough of New York City which is also known as Richmond County. The cause of death was overwork, according to press reports, which…