Sen. Bill Frist, we should remember, is not currently practicing medicine. He is practicing politics. And so the time has come to set aside all the gauzy accounts of the new Senate majority leader, a transplant surgeon, rushing to the aid of citizens in distress, the many retellings of his highly publicized trips to AIDS-ravaged Africa.

Truth is, the Republican from Tennessee would be saving a lot more lives if he stopped playing anti-abortion politics and started supporting embryonic stem-cell research. As for AIDS, Frist made a great show of backing bipartisan efforts in 2002 to obtain $500 million in federal money to protect newborns from the disease. When the White House balked, Frist immediately caved and accepted 40 percent of the original sum.

For every three recitations of Frist's heroics, it would be nice to have a reminder of his ties to the nation's biggest for-profit hospital chain, HCA, formerly the Hospital Corporation of America. The nearly $4 million Frist spent of his own money to win a Senate seat in 1994 did not come from his volunteer work in Washington's poor neighborhoods.

Let's set a spell and take a look at HCA, founded by Frist's father and brother. HCA merged with another company in the '90s to become Columbia/HCA and embarked on a ruthless path of growth. Its CEO, Richard L. Scott, would refer to diseases as "product lines." Columbia/HCA routinely applied the brass knuckles to hospitals that declined its buyout offers. For example, when an urban hospital resisted being taken over, Columbia/HCA would starve it of paying customers. This was done by building specialty facilities in nearby suburbs. There they could skim off the insured patients who would otherwise subsidize the poor ones at the city hospital.

For all of Columbia/HCA's macho talk about free markets and competition, nearly half of its revenues came from Medicare and other government programs. Yet the company last month agreed to pay $880 million to settle charges it had cheated the taxpayers. This came on top of an earlier settlement that followed guilty pleas to 14 similar felonies. In sum, the company will be paying more than $1.7 billion in civil and criminal penalties.

The Frist family dumped Scott in 1997, and the senator's brother returned to the helm of the company, now renamed simply HCA.

Defenders like to blame the scandals not on HCA's own misbehavior, but on overzealous bureaucrats at the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). Actually, whistleblowers within the company had initiated the charges. Whatever, Frist now participates in political moves to build bypasses around HCFA.

Consider the Frist-Breaux (as in Sen. John Breaux, D., La.) proposal to hold down the soaring costs of Medicare by introducing "competition." Under this vision, private health plans would attract beneficiaries by offering wonderful new benefits. (Wasn't that already tried?) HCFA would not regulate the private insurers: A Medicare board, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, would.

In the Senate, Frist stands out more as a money man than a medicine man. His recent high-profile position as head of the Senate Republicans' campaign committee was all about raising bucks, and he did a good job of it. He delivered a record amount of drug-company cash to Republican campaigns during the 2002 election.

Bill Frist can lay claim to being an accomplished surgeon, a licensed pilot, a marathon runner, a writer of books. But we need not pretend he is an aw-shucks country doctor just looking for people to help. He's a politician who now wields tremendous power to enhance his and other family fortunes. The public therefore has an obligation to consider his varied personal interests while judging his prescriptions for reforming health care.

Six other doctors, representing the entire political spectrum, currently serve in the House of Representatives. We can expect at least a few of them to offer second opinions.