Restrictions on employer-based health insurance coverage of medical services or treatments, whether motivated by religious prohibitions, political objections, or concerns about cost, degrade quality of care and undermine the patient-clinician relationship.
Education debt is driving medical school graduates away from underserved communities and primary care, both of which our country will sorely need in the coming years.
A single-payer health system is the only way for the United States to consolidate fragmented health care administration, successfully negotiate lower prices for medical care, and adopt responsible rather than profit-driven strategies.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.
Forced migration of Pacific Islanders raises ethical issues of health and health care disparities, which are examined in the case of Tuvaluan immigrants.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(12):1211-1221. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.12.imhl1-1712.
The current Medicare operation—reimbursing medical goods and services to a growing number of people without basing the reimbursement benefit on the actual cost of the services—is unsustainable, but there are some possible remedies.
Illustrations that have commented on medicine and society have evolved over the last 150 years from being judgmental and harsh towards racial and ethnic minorities to now emphasizing the positive aspects of diversity.
Health savings accounts should not be the focus of a strategy to expand health care coverage to the uninsured, but should be considered complementary to more fundamental health care reform.
As health care coverage decreases and costs increase, the stage is being set for health care reform that includes adoption of a single payer health care financing plan.