From the Health Justice Monitor, current news in context from Jim Kahn, Emeritus Professor of Health Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the University of California, San Francisco, and Don McCanne, a retired family practitioner who dedicated the 2nd phase of his career to speaking and writing extensively on single payer and related issues.
A new organization, Take Medicine Back, is sounding the alarm about the corporate acquisition of medicine, which disrupts clinical care â harming both patients and doctors. The solution: enforce existing laws, create new laws, align physician organizations against corporate control, and unionize physicians.
February 12, 2024
In 1980, NEJM editor Arnold Relman, MD issued the warning of the relatively unheralded rise of a huge new industry that supplies health-care services for profit which he labeled the âmedical-industrial complex.â He concluded, âHow best to ensure that the medical-industrial complex serves the interests of patients first and of its stockholders second will have to be the responsibility of the medical profession and an informed public.â
Todayâs HJM directs our attention to an organization that is sounding a call to action to âtake the profession back from corporate interests.â The name of their organization is simply TAKE MEDICINE BACK. They have produced a very easy-to-read 63 page paper. Their recommendations are complementary to those of Physicians for a National Health Program and other organizations that support health care justice for all.