Edmund D. Pellegrino

Edmund D. Pellegrino asserts in the following viewpoint that managed care is ethically suspect. He argues that managed care has harmed the health care system by forcing physicians to choose between their patients and their employer—the HMO. Pellegrino further maintains that under managed care, physicians can no longer advocate against the system on behalf of their patients because the physicians themselves have become part of the system. Edmund D. Pellegrino is emeritus professor of medicine and medical ethics at Georgetown University and a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Pellegrino, upon what does the moral status of any system of managed care depend?
2. Pellegrino says that conflicts of loyalty are built into the managed care...