Health or wealth?

Respiratory patients, like all people, want health. Their purpose in seeking health care through physicians and other health care practitioners is to secure their health. However, in many parts of the developed world the business of health care with its goal of profitability has replaced the art of medicine with its goal of improving patients’ health (1). Patient advocates believe that this focus on profit and neglect of patient outcomes is the reason for the plummeting public health of the US (2). The cost of health care services in the US is approaching 20% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), and most European countries are also experiencing dangerous increases in health care costs.