The Supermeds: How the Big Business of Medicine is Endangering Our Health Care

Profit rather than healing motivates a large proportion of the doctors who practice as members of an expanding private health-care industry, contends Jones, health-care adviser to Congressman Claude Pepper. Americans are paying more for inferior care by conglomerates such as Humana of heart-transplant fame that owe their financial success to federal subsidies and capital reimbursements along with taxpayer-supported Medicare and Medicaid programs. Jones further charges that such groups threaten the medical establishment by their increasing power to dictate the quality and availability of care in every aspect of our health system, including health maintenance organizations, psychiatric and teaching hospitals, nursing homes and insurance. Many of the poor and elderly whose medical benefits have been reduced and insurance rates increased cannot afford care, especially under diagnostic group requirements that politicize illness. The author concludes that because health care is now a business, patients must insist on consumer information and rights. (October)