title: The case against for-profit hospitals.
abstract: The author argues that for-profit hospitals threaten the integrity of the health care system because they are designed to maximize charges and profits rather than equity and quality. He discusses the most detrimental results of an unrestrained profit motive: higher costs, skimming off of patients on whom money can be made and dumping of poor patients onto public hospitals, consumption of the products of medical education and research without contribution to their costs, stockholders who are unanswerable to the community of users, and undue political and economic power. Physicians must, the author believes, enter the public debate to protect the goal of medical care: the maximization of the health status of the population.
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research; D004469:Economics, Hospital; D004501:Education, Medical; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005249:Fees and Charges / Q000639:trends; D006777:Hospitals, Proprietary / Q000191:economics* / Q000592:standards; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric / Q000191:economics; D006801:Humans; D006278:Medicare; D010067:Ownership; D018579:Patient Selection; D011057:Politics; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000191:economics; D014481:United States