Professionalism vs Commercialism in Managed Care: The Need for a National Council on Medical Care-Reply

In Reply.  —A profession is supposed to uphold standards for the values and skills it professes to have. A profession is supposed to engage in dialogue with the rest of society, ensuring a proper place for its values and for the vulnerable people that the profession is there to protect. This is so, whether the dialogue is with the private sector or with government.I agree with Mr Yarmolinsky both that what the government does in health care policy is critical and that corporate health business and large employers will give a priority interest to figures from Dow Jones. These points are not mutually exclusive with the understanding and the program I have proposed, which is essentially to afford professional ethics standards a central role in the newly evolving health care system. Neither the government nor the marketplace can manage health care without the profession because, by definition, neither one has the