Abstract
Many cultural and economic forces stand against a collective sense of popular health, partly due to the episodic piecemeal reimbursement for medical practitioners but more to focusing on high-margin activities, e.g., elective procedures and surgeries. Biomedicine’s grip remains doctor-centered, symptomatic- and disease-focused, episodic, and hospital-based with its technology fetish. Preventive medicine never took hold, and health promotion for populations never was developed. Marketplace medicine has achieved such a strong ideological grip on our national consciousness, especially within the ranks of the health professions. Vested interests have been very persuasive in their propaganda against systems in other nations. Public policy has never truly addressed the issue of what should be the nature of the relationship between health services within a profit-based economy: What is the proper role for profit-oriented firms in the supply, provider functions, and insurance segment? How should their roles be assessed and at what costs and control are they permitted? What safeguards should be instituted to preserve a more appropriate and popularly desired balance? What is the necessary regulatory oversight for maintaining accountability? More importantly, is the structure and control over what we have now the best and the only way to organize healthcare services for the benefit of the American people and for their health promotion and well-being in the whole population? Do we want a system designed and run by those with huge financial interests in the system?
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Salmon, J.W., Thompson, S.L. (2021). Conclusion: Progressive Directions. In: The Corporatization of American Health Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60667-1_7
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