The heart of the matter -- The evolution of the French medicine -- Coping with physicians' conflicts of interest in France -- The rise of a protected medical market : the United States before 1950 -- The commercial transformation : the United States, 1950-1980 -- The logic of medical markets :...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly making inroads into medical practice, especially in forms that rely on machine learning, with a mix of hope and hype. Multiple AI-based products have now been approved or cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and health systems and...

As most Americans know, conflicts of interest riddle the US health care system. They result from physicians practicing medicine as entrepreneurs, from physicians' ties to pharma, and from investor-owned firms and insurers' influence over physicians' medical choices. These conflicts raise...

Is medical commerce a recent phenomenon? Does it distort the patient-physician relationship? Are investor-owned firms the main source of medical commercialism? The author contends that medicine has generally been commerce in the United States, that commerce is a problem when it creates or...

Massachusetts has the fourth-highest median malpractice settlement payments for all states. The American Medical Association (AMA) declares it a crisis state. As a test case, we analyzed its premiums from 1975 to 2005. In 2005 mean premiums were $17,810 for the coverage level and policy type...

The most frequently proposed means to counter physicians' conflicts of interest is their disclosure. Nevertheless, the rationale for disclosure and its anticipated effects are rarely examined critically. There has been little discussion of what must be disclosed and to whom, the manner of...

Concerns that medical malpractice premiums continue to grow unabated has led to numerous proposals to change liability rules and reform tort laws. Not only would proposed legislation make lawsuits more difficult for plaintiffs, but the bills do not address the real source of the problems they...