The fine websites called TruthOut.org (most famous for their reality campaigns -- against smoking) are carrying a timely-blog entry/op ed, pondering health care reform, and directions it ought to take. The author is Dr. Philip Caper, M.D. -- do go read it all -- but this much caught my eye, and imagination:
. . . .Prior to about the mid-1970's, American health care institutions, like those in other developed countries, were overwhelmingly nonprofit, locally controlled entities driven by their mission (not money) -- comforting the sick, curing illness and promoting healing. . . .
Pharmaceutical companies were. . . mostly driven by George Merck's ethic: "If we develop medicines that cure disease, the money will take care of itself."
By the mid-1970's, leaders in American health care fell in love with business. They began to believe that management could be improved and costs controlled by a stiff dose of good old American business know-how. As a result, first MBAs, and then full-fledged corporatism, began to engulf and transform medical care. Hospital administrators became CEOs, services became product lines, patients became market share and so on. . . .
Insurance companies consolidated across state lines, and ownership was transferred from nonprofit local corporations to for-profit multistate and national corporations. As pharmaceuticals became a larger part of medical care, pharmaceutical companies grew, became more profitable and merged, eventually creating huge multinational conglomerates. Ownership was transferred from private (often family) hands, to distant shareholders through lucrative public offerings. . . .
A worthy Sunday evening read, indeed.
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