Are Patients Consumers?
The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care — is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with our society’s values.
I think this is right.
We have to do a better job of talking about some services – like health care and education – as ones that everyone deserves to have. As services that are a universal right, not something left up to the competitive nature of the market.
Not everything should be profit driven and, as Krugman rightly points out, treating health care in this way obscures our ability to really have a conversation about how health care should operate.