[Wonder Warthog]

"So medical professionals as a class can be discriminated against? Major civil rights lawsuits. Totally un-Constitutional."

This was also my first thought on reading the article. The STATES "do" have the authority to make such a law, but the feds do not.

[Regulator]

They proceed from the notion that the docs will always hospitalize someone in their own hospitals whether they need to or not, so they can milk the insurance. Essentially a conflict of interest argument.

But that crap is a-priori restraint, and it's a red herring anyway - they just want control of the hospitals, as others here have said.