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The Ethics and Empirics of Trust

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The Ethics of Managed Care: Professional Integrity and Patient Rights

Part of the book series: Philosophy and Medicine ((PHME,volume 76))

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Abstract

I will use the occasion of discussing managed care as an excuse to develop a more general ethic of trust. One hardly needs an excuse to talk about trust, considering its foundational nature, but if justification is required, managed care provides it amply Numerous commentators have observed the many threats that managed care poses to patients’ ability to trust their physician (Anders, 1996; Mechanic, 1996; Buchanan, 2000). Managed care forces patients to leave doctors they know well, it limits their choice of their new physician, it oversees physicians’ decisions with a view to restricting care, and it rewards physicians in a manner that creates a conflict of interest. Can trust survive in such a climate, and should we care? Is managed care an unmitigated ethical disaster, or is it possible to construct an ethic of trust that is consistent with at least some forms of managed care? I hope to provide at least tentative insights into each of these questions.

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  1. Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

    Mark A. Hall

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Missouri-Columbia, USA

    William B. Bondeson (Curators’Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy and Family Medicine, Assistant to the Chancellor) (Curators’Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy and Family Medicine, Assistant to the Chancellor)

  2. School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA

    James W. Jones (Professor and Chair of Surgery) (Professor and Chair of Surgery)

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Hall, M.A. (2002). The Ethics and Empirics of Trust. In: Bondeson, W.B., Jones, J.W. (eds) The Ethics of Managed Care: Professional Integrity and Patient Rights. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 76. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0413-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0413-7_8

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