On Ethics and Medicine
The University of California at San Diego Healthwise
May 2001
Lawrence Schneiderman, MD, Professor, Family and Preventive Medicine, UCSD:
"Every responsible ethicist agrees that we are violating our moral obligations to our citizens by not providing a decent minimum of universal health care.... We are proud to be a free enterprise, capitalist society that has produced many remarkable achievements, but we are trying to use that concept in health care. We are trying to build health care on the profit-based market model and it's failing miserably.... A fundamental duty of a just society is to all of the citizens. They all are owed a decent minimum standard of health care, and only the government can take that responsibility.... (E)very responsible ethicist I know who has thought about this issue has a similar opinion."
(Thanks to Jeoff Gordon for today's quote.)