Chapter 14The Medical Profession and Organization Change: From Professional Dominance to Countervailing Powerby Donald W. Light |
| As this re-examination of Parson's 1939 essay indicates, professions are shaped and defined by the social structures in which they work. Ironically for Parsons, it follows that if medicine is restructured as for-profit corporations, then physicians will act like corporate officers. We need to think of professions as countervailing powers in a field force of other major forces, and then examine their changing relationships over time and across countries. No other advanced health care system as corporatized health care the way the United States has; yet all of them provide excellent care to everyone for a third less the cost. The change has engendered deep distrust. Between this change and the effects of the internet, the medical profession will never be the same again. |