| The article "Judge, patients urge changes to Medicare HMO appeals," about how patient Gregoria Grijalva and others had to sue their HMOs because services they needed were denied, gives evidence to the problem of managed care where profit, not optimal care, is the goal (AMNews, Nov. 25,1996).
What is wrong with managed care, and what corrupted fee for service, is the profit motive. I have learned from Aesthetic Realism, the education founded in New York City by the philosopher and educator Eli Siegel, that profit economics has failed because it is unethical. In Ethics—the Only Answer for the Economy!, Ellen Reiss, class chairman of Aesthetic Realism, courageously explains: "The profit motive is strictly contempt for people.... Once you are after profit, you can't be too interested in what people deserve, what they feel: It will cramp your ability to make money from them."
For shareholders and executives to profit from the illness of people is contempt. And for doctors to see patients in terms of how much money they can make from them is also contempt. Health care in America will be kind when everyone concerned studies this ethical question asked by Eli Siegel: "What does a person deserve by being a person?"
JEFFREY SOSINSKY, MD
New York |
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