In its infancy, the healthcare system in the United States was an unregulated patient focused institution. However, today, it has become a regulated and complex system comprised of key stakeholders such as the medical and hospital associations, insurance companies, employer’s unions, and healthcare corporations. Since each stakeholder is preoccupied with protecting their own self- interest, “the quality of clinical medicine that patients receive is also patchy and overall falls far short of the self-congratulatory claim that we have "the best health care system in the world” (Light 2004: 2). In the beginning of healthcare, anyone with or without a medical degree could treat ailments and dispense medicine. In fact, “the census of 1870 found …show more content…
Although accused of monopolizing the profession by non-licensed practitioners; “by 1898, every state had an act and licensing board” (Light 2004: 6). To ensure their authority would be long lasting, the medical association reduced the availability of free services through dispensaries that gave medicine to the poor and changed “hospital from charitable institutions, where the local poor could receive rest and nursing, to centers of surgery and the latest scientific techniques, wooing the paying middle-class patient” (Light 2004: …show more content…
For example, “Medicaid, the state and federal health insurance program intended for the poor, covers less than half of them, and much of the program is left to the state’s discretion so that a Southerner, for example, generally has to be poorer to receive Medicaid than a Northerner” (Abraham 1994: 13). Prior to the 20th century, the patient was free to choose the physician, or treatment they thought would give them the best care. Today, the patient is perceived to be an individual’s unable to care for themselves without the assistant of a technically trained physician who can correctly diagnosed their conditions (Parsons