When I was a boy, my father, who was an anesthesiologist and professor of medicine, in response to my questions, took me along to a research conference in Cincinnati, where we lived when I was young. It was only for the end of the morning and a bit of the afternoon, as I remember; part of my father’s gentle recruitment program in that long ago world of the 50s. I was about 12, I think. At lunch a number of the doctors retired to a delicatessen near the medical school, and over borscht and roast beef sandwiches whose height was measured in inches, I sat there on best behavior and absolutely silent unless spoken to. I listened to my father argue that physicians should get behind a single-payer private-practice universal coverage system, before the corporations moved in and ‘docs will be reduced to employees with limited practice authority.