Using the conflict perspective, briefly summarize how one group ...

[darbym82]

Using the conflict perspective, briefly summarize how one group was able to establish a monopoly in health care in the United States.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

The text describes the professionalization of medicine largely as dysfunctional, and a way to monopolize medical care. In what ways was professionalization functional for society?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[rosiehomeworddo]

Answer to Question 1

In the early 1900s, the Carnegie Foundation asked Abraham Flexner to investigate medical schools in the United States. The results of this report led to the professionalization of medicine. Physicians began to: undergo a rigorous education; claim a theoretical understanding of illness; regulate themselves; claim they were performing a service for society rather than just following self-interest, and take authority over clients. The result was that one group gained control over U.S. medicine and set itself up as the only medical group that was qualified to provide medical services in the United States. By eliminating any competition through the use of political clout, the way was paved for medicine to become big business. This monopoly drove the price of medical care up and medicine is now the largest business in the United States.

Answer to Question 2

Requiring rigorous education that had a scientific basis increased the likelihood that physicians would have the best available knowledge about disease and effective treatments, and reduced the number of unlicensed doctors practicing medicine. The ideal of self-regulation created the possibility (if not the reality) of a system of control over the practice of medicine by practitioners who understood how medicine should be practiced.