Define the term deprofessionalization and discuss two ways in which this phenomenon has occurred in recent years.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Correct answers vary. Deprofessionalization is a decline in status, autonomy, power, and wealth of the medical profession. Students should list some of the following reasons for this phenomenon: (1) doctors simply had acquired too much power a half century ago to be able to sustain it at that level for very long; (2) the public, which had granted (or at least ceded to) the medical profession that power and autonomy, came to question the medical profession over their extraordinary wealth and power and the reality of medical malpractice. The growth in malpractice suits was aided, if not instigated, by the other major profession, law, which reaped great economic rewards from medical malpractice lawsuits; (3) the government exerted more power over the medical profession through, for example, Medicare and Medicaid; (4) patients became much more active and aggressive consumers of physician services as well as of other aspects of the medical system; and (5) private health insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare became the most powerful players in the medical care system, squeezing physicians' income by reimbursing them for office visits and medical services at much lower rates than the amounts billed.