Laws are not science; they are normative ideology and are thus tightly tied to power. Biomedicine and public health, though also vulnerable to being deformed by ideology, serve different imperatives, ask different questions. They do not ask whether an event or a process violates an existing rule; they ask whether that event or process has ill effects on a patient or a population.

Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care.

I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.

It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.

I critique market-based medicine not because I haven't seen its heights but because I've seen its depths.

...In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work.