As a solo practitioner of internal medicine who has refused health maintenance organization affiliation for 17 years, I was stirred by Eisenberg's descriptions of the free doctor, as opposed to the enslaved provider, in his commentary.1 True, his self-pity does get in the way of his message, such as his bemoaning the erosion of his professorial prestige when his university chose to grant faculty status to any old hoi polloi doc whose practice it bought. But hey, we freedom-loving physicians can use all the friends we can get, right?