Health economics: the end of clinical freedom?

Abstract

A British professor of economics enters the debate within the medical profession over whether it is the doctor's duty to take costs into account when deciding what course of action to recommend for a patient. He surveys differing views on the subject, and concludes with an analysis of Raymond Hoffenberg's thesis in his book Clinical Freedom (London: Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust; 1987), and the presentation of Williams' own position that doctors have absorbed economic considerations within what they would still regard as their own clinical judgment rather than recognizing such economic considerations as an external responsibility to society.