As most Americans know, conflicts of interest riddle the US health care system. They result from physicians practicing medicine as entrepreneurs, from physicians' ties to pharma, and from investor-owned firms and insurers' influence over physicians' medial choices. These conflicts raise questions about physicians' loyalty to their patients and their professional and economic independence. The consequences of such conflicts of interest are often devastating for the patients--and society--stuck in the middle. In Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Medicine, Marc Rodwin examines the development of these conflicts in the US, France, and Japan. He shows that national differences in the organization of medical practice and the interplay of organized medicine, the market, and the state give rise to variations in the type and prevalence of such conflicts. He then analyzes the strategies that each nation employs to cope with them. Unfortunately, many proposals to address physicians' conflicts of interest do not offer solutions that stick. But drawing on the experiences of these three nations, Rodwin demonstrates that we can mitigate these problems with carefully planned reform and regulation. He examines a range of measures that can be taken in the private and public sector to preserve medical professionalism--and concludes that there just might be more than one prescription to this seemingly incurable malady.

About the Author
Marc A. Rodwin is Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School. He is the author of Medicine, Money amd Morals: Physicians' Conflicts of Interest (OUP 1993) and numerous articles on health law, ethics, politics and policy. Rodwin has been a research scholar at Tokyo University Law School and the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in France. He has testified before Congress, advised consumer groups, and lectured in several countries.

Reviews
This book provides thoughtful insights on past, current, and future conflicts of interest in medicine for scholars and policymakers alike * Perspectives on Politics *
Overall this book is interesting and well done and will likely contribute to the ongoing debate about the causes and cures of FCOIs in the United States, Japan, and France. In the least, it makes a significant contribution to the overall literature on the nature, extent, and consequences of FCOI in medicine today. * HUman Rights and Disability Journal *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199330430
Author Marc A. Rodwin
Format Paperback
Page Count 394
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 567g
Dimensions(mm) 231mm * 157mm * 25mm