Document Type
Book Section
Publication Date
5-2009
Abstract
Illness, we are often told, is a private matter. Accordingly, none must interfere in the medical decisions that emerge from the confidential relationship be- tween physician and patient. Yet evidence of interdependence is ubiquitous in health care. One person’s malady can harm families, workplaces, clubs, churches, and sometimes entire communities. Similarly, a suffering pa- tient must rely on many individuals, associational groups, corporate entities, and government agencies for support and assistance. It is, therefore, unsurprising that various social units claim an interest and a voice in maintaining health and treating disease.
However, explicit solidarity has long been out of vogue in America’s value system, despite persistent lack of af- fordable medical care. Instead, the public has prized sci- entific innovation, consumer sovereignty, and personal autonomy, and has installed physicians as benevolent oli- garchs to oversee these functions. The resulting system delivers idiosyncratic care at enormous expense to most Americans, while a sizable minority often goes without.
First Page
10
Last Page
12
Num Pages
3
Publisher
The Hastings Center
Editor
Mary Crowley
Book Title
Connecting American Values with Health Reform
Recommended Citation
William M. Sage,
Solidarity: Unfashionable, But Still American,
in
Connecting American Values with Health Reform
10
(Mary Crowley eds., 2009).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1768