Access to Care and the Evolution of Corporate, for-Profit Medicine

Nutter, a physician, sounds a warning note over the future of access health care in the United States in light of the dual trends toward cutting health expenditures and commercializing health care. He predicts that progress made over the last two decades in health care to the disadvantaged will halt as providers, facilities, , and all levels of government attempt to control costs by limiting number and kinds of patients served. The uninsured, the poor, the, minorities, the aged, and the chronically ill would be excluded from system if rationing of care according to ability to pay should become. Nutter concludes that access to health care will improve only if public, physicians, and policymakers agree that health care is a basic, not a commodity, and support government funding of care for the indigent. (KIE abstract)