According to Elliot Friedson, professor emeritus at New York University,16 corporate interests have emerged in all areas of medicine. The medical industry has seduced not only doctors but also academic institutions. The appearance of conflicts of interest in doctors is difficult to measure… but it exists.
The embodiment of medicine has produced a moral and ethical crisis
The doctor-patient relationship has been seriously damaged, the doctor’s freedom has been drastically altered, professionalism has been destroyed and the doctor has been reduced to being a “technician” in medicine.
Until 1960 doctors were responsible for the organization of medicine. Today it is managed by large corporations organized as a business -health insurance companies, large public corporations, unions- and the doctors, in some way, are their employees and subject to their decisions in the form of organization.
- Due to commercial interests, primary care, that of the general practitioner, has been devalued and that of the specialist who uses many more technological resources in his exercise has been privileged.
- The current organization of medicine and the tendency to exercise only productive specialties have caused the frustration of true service vocations.
In 1992, the Hastings Center brought together the thinking of 14 countries on the current situation and the future of medicine, and produced a document: “The Goals of Medicine, Setting New Priorities”.17 In it the following points were mentioned: the growth technology is very large and expensive;
It must be used with prudence, to promote a more egalitarian medicine; better disease prevention; attention to pain caused by the disease; heal whoever is possible and take care of the incurable; achieve honorable medicine led by physicians; achieve prudent, sustainable, socially sensitive, fair and equitable medical practice that respects human rights and the dignity of the patient.
The system of a market medicine takes responsibility away from the State, makes medicine lose ancestral values and changes philanthropy for the interests of businessmen, deteriorates the quality of care, increases the distance between rich and poor, makes it more expensive more expensive for interests of entrepreneurs, increases the use of technology instead of the clinic, forgets the importance of prevention and perverts values by turning medicine into a commodity.
After what has been reported, one can ask who does the current structure of medicine serve, the sick or the investors?17
- In the United States, the 1,300 medical insurance companies represent a business of 300,000 million dollars a year, and they are the ones that deny insurance to the old or sick, and who often deny the medical care to which their policyholders would be entitled;
- in that country each year there are 250,000 claims against HMOs for noncompliance, and they are the best example of the resources diverted towards administrative excesses, resources that should serve the insured.18,19