Providing health care to patients in the United States happens within the nation's health care industrial complex. In 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported via the National Health Expenditures Fact Sheet that U.S. health expenditures amounted to $4.9 trillion, or $14,570 per individual, and predicted the trajectory will continue upward with no relief in sight. Since the 1980s, health care ethicists, especially those who are also health care practitioners, such as Edmund Pellegrino, have elucidated the negative consequences on both practitioners and patients from the influence and prioritization of implementing business practices into health care.
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Ethics in Practice | Ethical Double Agents in the Business of Health Care
How business practices in health care made us ethical double agents — and what ethicists recommend to navigate priorities.
Date: May 1, 2025
Contact: aptamag@apta.org
Content Type: Column
Debra Gorman-Badar, PT, PhD (Bioethics), and Aliya Chaudry, PT, DPT, JD, MBA
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