Letters
The New York Times, April 25, 2011
Re āPatients Are Not Consumersā (column, April 22): Bravo to Paul Krugman. As a physician for 44 years, I have seen the sick person seeking medical care transformed from a patient to a consumer and, like Mr. Krugman, I have been sickened by this.
Raised in a family of doctors, I was fed on medical ethics. Vulnerable patients rely on the ethical principles of their physicians. They should never have to fear that their physician will look at them only as consumers of the commodity called health care: fair game from whom the largest possible payment should be extracted.
Most physicians are motivated first by the desire to do good, to help their patients, not by greed. We will do more to help the situation by appealing to their ethical principles rather than to their business prowess.
It is time for us to join the rest of the industrialized world and treat health care as a social need instead of as a commodity. A Medicare-for-all national health plan would transform the patient back to what he is: a person in need of care, not a āconsumer.ā The Independent Payment Advisory Board created under the new health care law would fit such a plan.
ELIZABETH R. ROSENTHAL
Larchmont, N.Y., April 22, 2011