The Hippocratic Oath has gone through many revisions in the quest for the western world to be able to justify abortions, infanticide, and euthanasia. However, like other things, once one starts to unravel it, it unravels to the end.
Often unnoticed is that not only did Hippocrates’s oath elevate human life in not allowing abortions, etc., it also did so by elevating the patient-doctor relationship. Prior to Hippocrates, the best doctors were reserved for Royalty, the average for their courts, etc., and the less capable for everyone else. In other words, they had socialized medicine where the government determined who treated whom, but Hippocrates changed all of that.
Now with the dismantling of the Hippocratic Oath in the name of personal liberty, we find that our decision making power is back in the hands of the government. Therefore, we are reminded once again, albeit apparently too late, that a step back in morality always results in loss of liberty.
“The ethics of managed care is more akin to Swiss Professor Ernest Truffer’s veterinary ethics than to Hippocratic principles of ethics and medical practice. Whereas the Oath of Hippocrates obligates the physician to act in the best interest of his individual patients (an individual-based ethic), the ethics of managed care and HMOs force physicians to act in the interest of the state or the network that employs them. This new brand of medical ethics forces physicians to consider what bureaucrats refer to as “the proper allocation of scarce and finite resources,” and the individual patient be damned. The state benefits because it conserves resources by rationing medical care, la Canada. Rationing means poor quality of care, restricted referrals to specialists, denial of access to innovative medical treatments (e.g., bone marrow transplants, chemotherapy, heart bypass surgery, etc.), and thus, premature deaths. After all, death is the ultimate form of rationing.
Thus, the managed care networks benefit because rationed care means more profits in the coffers of the HMOs and the pockets of the managed care CEOs.”
http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/article10.html
