 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Johnathon S. Ross, MD, MPH, St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center, Toledo, Ohio, 2213 Cherry Street, Toledo, OH 43608, 419-251-2360, jross59627@aol.com
The USA is the longest established and best example of a corporate health care marketplace. Market principles have been applied and then repeatedly modified in an attempt to address the problem resulting from commercial pressures. This session will examine the conduct of some of the large major corporate health and aged care providers in the USA. This conduct reveals extensive exploitation of patients for profit - the misuse, neglect, denial of care, and massive fraud. All this is in order to fund the growth of vast empires. The public is alienated. US legislators are being forced to legislate to protect citizens from exploitation by the people employed to look after them when they can no longer look after themselves. It provides a profound insight into the way in which market principles and the pressures of the stock market destroy our humanitarian efforts and undermine society's concept of itself as a humane community. This session will discuss what has happened in the USA and how it is a direct consequence of market principles rather than the manner in which they were applied. This is transparently obvious in aged care, and particularly in US nursing homes. That the same sort of things have happened in Psychiatry, Rehabilitation, Substance Abuse, Assisted Living, Dialysis Services, Laboratory Services, Medical Appliances, General Hospitals, and Managed care speaks for the centrality of market principles to dysfunction.
Learning Objectives:
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.