Medicine and the Marketplace

The Moral Dimensions of Managed Care

Kenman L. Wong

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780268034559
• eBook ISBN: 9780268086664
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Policy

The emerging dominance of managed care provided by profit-seeking corporations has intensified the public's concern that traditional business goals of maximizing profits will destroy medicine's traditional commitment to patient well-being. Society is left to wonder how physicians can properly honor their duties to patients when the managed care organizations that employ them have financial obligations to shareholders.

Kenman L. Wong's timely book addresses issues raised by the new intersections of business and medicine with an ethical assessment of emerging health care arrangements. By focusing on organizational ethics, he offers an integrative framework that seeks to balance patient, societal, and corporate interests. To avoid overly simplistic solutions, Wong compares managed care, traditional fee-for-service arrangements, and other proposed health care reform options such as rationing programs and medical savings accounts based upon principles of fairness.

Though Wong argues that managed care is the best available option, he finds fault with many current practices of managed care organizations. He evaluates the place of the profit motive in the guiding ethos of managed care organizations and addresses the pressing issue of whether or not managed care should remain the exclusive domain of nonprofit organizations. He concludes with an integration of business ethics and medical values that formulates organizational norms and specific practice reforms for managed care organizations.

Medicine and the Marketplace should be read by health care practitioners, plan administrators, instructors of medical ethics, health administration, and public policy, and members of the general public interested in how managed care can be made into an ethics-driven system.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Business and Medicine at a New Crossroads
• Chapter Two: Reframing the Debate: Perspectives Critical of Managed Care
• Chapter Three: Reframing the Debate:Perspectives in Support of Managed Care
• Chapter Four: Fee-for-Service Medicine
• Chapter Five: Alternative Reform Proposals
• Chapter Six: The Ethical Importance of the Non-Profit Distinction
• Chapter Seven: The Moral Viability of For-Profit Organizations
• Chapter Eight: Business Ethics for Managed Care Organizations
• Chapter Nine: Stakeholder Responsibilities in the New Health Care Environment
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index