On the commodification of medicine.

Abstract

The author reviews key themes of medicine and medical education in the 20th century, such as the revolution in therapies and the consequent and continuing changes in the economics of health care; workforce issues, including the controversy over the optimum number of residency slots; and the impact of managed care on teaching hospitals and medical schools. This impact is part of "the commodification of health care," in which health care is beginning to be bought and sold in a market, where prices determine outcomes, and where the not-for-profit, service orientation of health care providers is threatened. He discusses in detail the pressures this new health care environment places on medical schools and teaching hospitals, and recounts the first Senate Finance Committee hearing in April 1994 on the subject of academic health centers under health care reform. Soon after, the Committee approved legislation to create the Graduate Medical Education and Academic Health Center Trust Fund, to be financed by a 1.5% tax on private health care premiums in addition to Medicare Graduate Medical Education payments. The provision was later dropped from a similar bill that came before the full Senate, but has since been introduced as the Medical Education Trust Fund Act of 1997. The author concludes by cautioning that matters will grow more difficult in the near future, since the threats to academic medicine's institutions have not yet become part of the national political agenda.