Medicine the Marketplace: The Moral Dimensions of Managed Care

by Kenman L. Wong

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0268034559
• ISBN13: 9780268034559
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Balancing patient, societal, and corporate interests

Medicine And The Marketplace: The Moral Dimensions Of Managed Care focuses on organizational ethics as the apply to the business aspects of medicine and health care management. Associate Professor of Business Ethics at Seattle Pacific University, Kenman Wong offers an integrative framework balancing patient, societal, and corporate interests in health care policy and practice. 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 the principles of fairness. Medicine And The Marketplace is very highly recommended and timely reading for health care policy makers, administrators, providers, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in how managed care can be reformed into an effective, broad based, ethics-driven system.

Wong provides a solid matrix of perspectives on managed care

Kenman Wong provides an insightful and analytical look at managed care as he presents a wide unbiased perspective while acknowledging the fact that fee for service medicine does not fulfill the greatest good for the greatest number. Dr. Wong acknowledges all sides of the managed care argument and frames the debate in an ethical approach that makes the dilemma facing the managed care society, doctors, and ultimately the end consumers very apparent. I would recommend this book to anyone dealing with understanding managed care issues and desiring an ethical perspective to understanding these issues.