Denisse Rojas Marquez, MD, MPP and Hazel Lever, MD, MPH
“Very important persons” care contributes to multitiered, racially segregated health service delivery streams that influence clinicians’ conceptions of what patients deserve from them.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(1):E66-71. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.66.
The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.
In the past, forced sterilizations violated the autonomy of vulnerable women. Today, measures intended to protect such women from the abuses of the past may in fact hamper their autonomy in a different way.
A physician has an obligation to order necessary diagnostic tests for a patient on Medicaid with whom he or she has an established patient-physician relationship regardless of whether the cost of the necessary test will be reimbursed.