ABSTRACT
Medical care must be freely available to all independent of personal income. The rights of the patient and even the range and quality of the care given to him would be better protected if the autonomy and dominance of professional authority were checked and balanced by the pressure of an independent, extraprofessional administrative authority. Much controversy revolves around the ways the cost of medical care is to be financed and how the money available is to be paid. But apart from medical, administrative, and economic standards of the technical quality and quantity of care, there are also human standards. The social organization of competition is as important as the financial mechanisms of insuring and paying for medical care, and should in fact vary independently of them. This chapter provides recommendations to keep medical care true to the professed ideals of those who dominate it. It presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
