WSJ on doctors (and teachers)

In response to a commentary, I sent the WSJ a letter:

To the Editors:

In his concern about the potential for doctors to strike, ("The doctor's office as union shop,") Wednesday, January 30, 2013), David Leffell explicates the inevitable danger of prioritizing corporate profits over health care.  

Doctors should be concerned that the economics of health care sift money out of the patients' well-being.   Teachers, to whom he offers in comparison, already worry that privatizing education pulls money away from learning to enhance shareholder value and quarterly returns.  When the focus of medicine is no longer patient welfare, as the purpose of education is no longer student learning, but corporate profit, Americans should, to rephrase Dr. Leffell, "expect the quality of their care and access to it decline." Collective action, though rarely and often poorly used, remains a bulwark against that threat.