Our 'Patchwork' Health Care System: Melodic Variations, Counterpoint, and the Future Role of Physicians

This Foreword to a forthcoming symposium on the "patchwork" health care system to be published in the Houston Journal of Health Law & Policy considers whether current reactions to fragmentation in health care represent minor variations on a longstanding theme in US health policy or offer a more substantial counterpoint to that theme. The theme is this: that perfect physicians should be allowed to control health care even if safeguards are needed in practice because real physicians are not perfect. The Foreword previews four scholarly articles featured in the published symposium. It concludes that, while all the articles present original and valuable insights, the future health care system they describe is more variation than counterpoint on the theme of physician control.