For-Profit Medicine

Abstract

IN the past two decades the U.S. health care system has made revolutionary advances in diagnosis and therapy — for example, the development of new imaging devices and surgical techniques for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. On the organizational side have been the emergence and growth of for-profit health care delivery corporations, initially in hospitals and later extending to the provision of ambulatory care services.Only a few years after the advocates of the new corporations prophesied that the nation's health care system would soon be dominated by a few "SuperMeds,"¹ the four largest for-profit hospital chains — Hospital Corporation . . .