Commercial Ethics? That's What You'll Get With Consumer Driven Health Care

Privatizing government programs removes the kind of oversight necessary to to rein in greed and abuse. It's one of the reasons why many, including myself, are against school vouchers and a free market health care system. Instead of government oversight, audits and studies, were treated with advertising brochures telling us how great a private school or health care service is. Does anyone want to trust their child's education or family health care to a sales pitch? That's the latest finding:

Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report “Consumer-Driven Health Care Might Not Be What Patients Need -- Caveat Emptor," Journal of the American Medical Association: In the commentary, Robert Berenson of the Urban Institute and Christine Cassel of the American Board of Internal Medicine discuss consumer directed health care plans designed to make consumers more selective in seeking services. While many see consumer-directed care as a "new approach to organizing the financing and delivery of health care," the model "implicitly calls for a fundamental reordering of the patient-physician relationship, placing increased reliance on commercial ethics while eroding professional ethics as the guiding force for patient-physician interactions," the authors write

"Commercial ethics?" What a surreal concept. We saw how well commercial ethics worked on Wall Street, didn't we? Anyone for a rerun of that disaster with health care?