Rarely does a single commentary illuminate the full scope of a major social problem and its solution as brilliantly as the essay by Lucinda McCray Beier (`Healing America’s health-care system,” Op-Ed, Jan. 2).
It’s time to end our disastrous experiment with market solutions based on venture capital in the delivery of health care. The marketplace, touted as the remedy for rising costs, millions of uninsured and poor quality control, clearly is failing to deliver on all these counts. Everywhere there is public outcry at the abuses and denials inherent in corporate care, which relentlessly maximizes rewards to executives and investors to the detriment of the patients’ care.
From the ethical standpoint, as in the infamous Tuskegee Experiment, the moral imperative is to end this unsuccessful venture. It is harming people without their consent.
The remedy, as Ms. Beier points out, is at hand. Take the vast resources we as a nation have already committed to health care and organize its delivery under a system of national health insurance. Now, however, we have to apply the lessons of the past decade and exclude for-profit corporations from the delivery of care.
Recall, the market solutions were going to address the abuses of the past such as unnecessary testing, runaway fees and inadequate preventive services. To succeed, a post-corporate national health system will require the reinvigoration of professional responsibility of doctors and nurses, bringing their incentives back into alignment with their patients’ interests.
