Am J Psychiatry 1986; 143:1015-1019
Copyright © 1986 by American Psychiatric Association
Health care: for patients or for profits?
L Eisenberg
The author contends that the medical-industrial complex has come to
dominate a substantial and growing segment of the health care "market."
This complex is characterized by its ability to charge and collect for
services, pass through its capital costs, and skim off profitable
patients--and, at the same time, to shun its proportionate responsibility
for the medically indigent, for the costs of medical education and
research, and for meeting community needs. He concludes that physicians
have an ethical imperative to join in a broad public coalition to protect
equity and quality in medical care.
