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The Internet and Health Care

After almost thirty years, I’d seen enough perfection unfold around me that nothing in me wanted to interfere with the flow ever again. I had seen time and again how what at first appeared to be a problem turned out to be a guiding force of change leading us forward. That was certainly the case toward the end of 1998 as our executive strategy calls began to focus on how the Internet was going to affect our business. It concerned us that our competitors would soon have inexpensive access to all physicians nationwide without the need to build out a dealer network. John Kang and I were well aware that two health-care Internet companies, Healtheon and WebMD, were already soliciting our doctors on an ever-increasing basis. We knew we had to do something if we wanted to be able to compete successfully in the upcoming world of Internet connectivity.

Around this time, John Kang had been introduced to a company called Synetic, in New Jersey, that was in the process of building a very advanced health-care Internet portal. Synetic had one of the finest management teams in the industry, and it appeared that none of the other start-up companies stood a chance against it.

Synetic executives were very interested in a possible merger with Medical Manager Corporation. Their dream was to handle all the industry’s health-care transactions through their Internet portal. When they looked at us, they saw more than one hundred thousand physicians already connected electronically for a broad range of services. If they handled the transactions for all our physicians, everyone in the industry would want to do business with them. Synetic was in a position to leverage the asset we had built to an entirely new level.

In May of 1999, John Kang set up a meeting for me to meet Synetic’s chairman, Marty Wygod. Marty and I lived on opposite sides of the country, so he suggested that we meet at an aptly named private airport in Midway, Texas. Midway was, in fact, almost exactly halfway between California and Florida. I chartered a private jet and flew in by myself.

Sitting alone in a six-seater jet at forty thousand feet is a very peaceful place. I fell into meditation and my mind became very still. When I opened my eyes, I absorbed the tremendous difference in my environment from when I had first decided to let go and see where life would take me. I still lived in the same woods and kept my same practices morning and evening, but somehow the rest had changed rather dramatically. I reflected back at how many times life had presented me with changes I was uncomfortable with. In the beginning, it had been difficult to ignore the resistant mind. Over time, as I saw what had transpired by taking the risk of letting go of me, the process had become much more natural. I was surrounded by the results of letting go. There was nothing in my life I could point to that hadn’t come from surrendering to life’s flow. I was so humbled by the process that nothing in me wanted to resist ever again. I was deeply in love with the excitement and wonder of experiencing what would unfold next. It was in this frame of mind that I was off to Texas to meet Synetic’s chairman.

To me, this proposed merger was simply what was happening next. I didn’t need to think about it; I already knew that nothing inside of me wanted to merge the company with Synetic or anyone else. I loved what I was doing. I had a vision burning inside of me that had driven me for twenty years. It started while I was first writing this amazing program, and it never subsided for a single moment. That vision inspired me day and night. I didn’t want to eat, and I didn’t want to sleep. I was driven to perfect the program, its distribution, and the support of the doctors who had entrusted their practices to us. I felt like life had given me this task, and I was honored to do it. I had not lost one drop of my early focus or yearning to explore the deeper inner states. This surrendering to life was my path to self-realization, and there was no doubt that it was working. I was not living a life based on what I wanted or didn’t want. Those types of thoughts had ceased passing through my mind long ago. I was way too busy trying to do the work life had given me. This was Karma yoga at its highest. I had given my life to the Universal Flow, and it had not only taken it—it had devoured me in the process. I didn’t care at all what happened to me. I cared about the company, the employees, the doctors, and, above all, the vision of perfection that drove the very beat of my heart.

As beautiful as that sounds, I found myself on a jet flying to a tiny airport somewhere in the middle of Texas to meet a total stranger and discuss arrangements to put the company under his control. That was the bottom line. Events had unfolded such that the greatest potential for the company had outgrown what we could provide by ourselves. My discussions with John Kang about the proposed deal had shown me how sharp Marty was. Control was definitely my major issue. I wanted to be in a position to keep the dream alive and protect the company from being abused for strictly financial gain. Marty had agreed to put John, me, and some other Medical Manager Corporation board members on the board of directors of the combined company. He also agreed to make me co-chairman of the board, and John and I would become the co-CEOs. For added incentive, the new combined company would keep our name, Medical Manager Corporation.

Though I was a novice at mergers of public companies, I was astute enough to know what granting us these high-level positions really meant. It meant that Marty was so confident of his position of power that he did not feel the slightest bit threatened by ceding this amount of power to people with whom he had no history. Any way you cut it, if the deal went through, Marty was going to be my boss. This was all the more interesting since I never really had a boss before, and I was fifty-two years old. I had researched all I could about Marty. He was a self-made billionaire who bred and raced thoroughbred horses for a hobby. He had grown up on Wall Street buying and selling companies, and he had also built some very successful companies from the ground up, including Medco, which he had sold to Merck pharmaceuticals for six billion dollars years earlier. Most important, he was highly respected in the upper echelons of business. More than one article about him freely used the term “genius.” Marty had made an offer of $1.3 billion for Medical Manager Corporation. Our board of directors was leaning very favorably toward the deal. I felt pretty certain that all vectors were flowing in that direction—that’s why I was flying out for this meeting. What I didn’t know was what life would be like in this larger corporate environment. I realized I could never know beforehand, and I was ready to surrender once again to the flow of life. From a personal point of view, I was much more interested in seeing how Marty did with me than how I did with him. I was a ponytailed, non-suit-wearing yogi, and Marty was sure to be a more traditional businessman. Was this going to work?

Marty flew in on his jet with one of his business development people. The meeting lasted only a few hours and everything went fine, as would be expected under these circumstances. We each had already spent sufficient time analyzing the proposed merger, so by the time we met, the synergies were quite clear. I found Marty to be very down to earth and approachable. He was all business, and I really liked that. I made a point of discussing (or more accurately—disclosing) the existence of the Temple, and my commitment to meditation and my alternative lifestyle. I knew I wasn’t going to give any of that up, so it seemed appropriate to let him know what he was getting into. It was obvious that Marty was way past the small stuff. He was a big picture person, and what he cared about was corporate development. He couldn’t have cared less about my personal lifestyle, but he paid close attention when I discussed how hard I worked every day. He told me his wife did yoga, and I figured that being from California he was bound to have been exposed to the likes of me. As Marty and I shook hands and went our own ways, there was no way I could have known how much I would end up learning, both personally and professionally, from this man.