... or the usual garbage where a "critic" proves his chops by disparaging a sacred cow. I could get in the papers too if I said that "Hamlet" sucks and "Huckleberry Finn" is racist drivel. The problem is, it ain't.

These days, it takes more courage to admit you admire something than it does to cut it down. Result of a cynical age, I guess.

As for classic albums I dislike, I would have to vote for "Dark Side of the Moon." It's not a terrible album, just listless, and I don't like the chatter between the cuts.

I also can't warm up to Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks," for a similar reason. The music meanders and lacks the tight feel I like in rock music.

I am a medical doctor, so I can only answer this question from my perspective, but: Every time I apply for a license renewal in my state, I have to answer the question, "Have you ever been refused membership in a medical or professional society?" The state medical board reviews every case of a doctor booted from a society. They do care. I think state psychology licensing boards would feel the same way. If a psychologist were kicked out of the APA, the licensing board would seriously review the reasons for the dismissal. If the APA is responsible, it would report any disciplinary actions it takes against its members to state licensing boards.

Further, I can tell you that on the medical side organizations like the AMA set professional standards of behavior. If a doctor were to end up in court, either criminal or civil, AMA standards of professionalism would likely apply to the case. When a court evaluates a doctor's behavior, it often uses the ethical standards of local professional societies as the basis of its judgment of appropriate behavior. This standard is considered the reasonable community standard that applies to all doctors. If the AMA says having sex with a patient is unethical, the doctor cannot defend himself by saying, "I am not in the AMA." In most states, state medical society standards are used in court as legal medical standards, and most state medical societies use AMA and other professional organization policy statments as their templates. Thus, much of what the AMA says about ethical behavior has some of the force of law.

I highly doubt that a psychologist applying for a license to practice would have an easy time of it if the APA had officially censured him. It's a small world in the health profession, and you can't step on toes and expect to get away with it.

And for the record: I do not think psychology is a pseudoscience. I have had many patients over the years who have benefitted from psychiatric counseling, and I will continue to refer patients to psychologists when I feel they need it. The problem is that we do not have enough psychologists, not that they are quacks.

I haven't seen this movie yet, but from what I have seen so far I can understand why Ms. Zacharek would say Moore oversimplifies.

Two examples from the film: In one scene a man severs two fingertips and is told it would cost him $12,000 to get one fixed and $60,000 for the other. He could only afford to get one finger attached. The other example, mentioned in the review, is the woman whose feverish child was refused care at an ER because the hospital was out of network.

In both cases, Moore blames the mighty HMO. He is right, but this overlooks a crucial point. In the case of the man with the severed fingers, realize that a medical doctor put that man under anasthesia, fixed one finger, and left the other alone -- not because he couldn't fix it but because he didn't want to. That strikes me as profoundly unethical. I know it costs money to fix two fingers instead of one, but it is not as if the doctor and the hospital were getting paid nothing. They got $12,000. They could have done the second one for a discount, or negotiated a two-for-one price of say, $25,000. That is how HMOs save money, by negotiating pricing. Something could have been worked out if anyone had cared to.

In the second case, the ER doctor went along with the insurance company in refusing care. Every ER doc in the United States has the latitude to administer care to a patient if he feels the patient is too unstable to be safely transferred. Here the error most definitely was not with the HMO, but with the ER doctor who underestimated the severity of the child's illness.

I do not want to absolve HMOs of anything. They are greedy, immoral organizations. On the other hand, it takes two to tango, and medical professionals, given a choice between loyalty to patients and loyalty to the signer of the check, have sided all too often with the money. Doctors and hospitals could help the situation if they aggressively advocated for their patients.

Take the man with the severed fingers again. His doctor could have (and I have seen this done) call up the administrator of the hospital and tell him that either the hospital was going to let him sew up both fingers or he was going to take his very profitable outpatient surgeries to another hospital. Ultimately doctors can lay down the law like that. More doctors need to carry out this threat before administrators will get the message that doctors are not going to deliver half-baked care in the name of cost savings.

Doctors often fail to advocate for their patients against the system. If they did, it would not solve all problems, but things would be better.

I do not absolve myself of this sin. I have bowed to the pressure of money myself.