Todos tem direito ao meio ambiente ecologicamente equilibrado. Everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced environment. In 1988, the Brazilian Constitutional Assembly incorporated this imperative into the Brazilian Constitution as part of a chapter on environmental protection. After hundreds of years of environmental ignorance, our planet's inhabitants have experienced a growth of environmental awareness. One global environmental tragedy garnering substantial recent attention is the depletion of the planet's tropical rain forests. In addition to eternally altering the human environment, rain forest destruction poses a serious threat to both the pharmaceutical industry and individuals in need of medical care. A substantial portion of existing pharmaceuticals are plant-based and animal-based, and the pharmaceutical industry continues to explore additional species for medicinal potential, particularly in tropical regions. As mass deforestation of these areas forces countless species into extinction, specimens yet to be analyzed for their pharmaceutical potential will be eternally lost. As one noted conservationist explained, “Even severe pollution is reversible, but species extinction is irreversible.”

This article contrasts the prevailing model for assessing and improving medical care—the quality of care paradigm—with an alternative approach—the patient accountability paradigm. The first approach is technocratic: it measures and promotes the quality of medical care through technical and objective means. It relies on outside experts, analysis of data and protocols, and impersonal judgements of professionals to guide decisions. The second approach guides physicians and providers and subjects them to patient control. It enlists the participation of patients and consumers to evaluate and change the medical care system and to promote the rights and choices of patients and consumers. The strengths and limitations of the patient accountability approach are illustrated by four movements: 1) the patients’ rights movement; 2) medical consumerism; 3) the women’s health movement; and 4) the disability rights movement.

Since the advent of Medicare in 1966, a major focus of federal policy and legislation has revolved around the purchase of health care. Although initial programmatic content demonstrated some concern for both cost containment and basic quality assurance, by the late 1970's congressional cost control anxiety had reached a fever pitch, culminating in a completely revamped Medicare hospital reimbursement methodology enacted in 1982, combined with a retooled utilization control mechanism in the form of the Peer Review Organization (“PRO”) program.

At the same time, in the private sector, as the cost of health care increased, major corporate purchasers of health care services became increasingly concerned about the “value” of the health care benefits they were making available to their employees. In response to perceived consumer demand, these same corporations eventually, for reasons unrelated to health care, began to incorporate quality improvement into their core manufacturing and service missions.

Proposals for managed competition present the following question: what are health insurers to compete over? If the competition managers allow insurers to offer truly minimal benefit packages, then competition might focus on enhancements to that minimal package. However, most current proposals require a relatively generous minimal benefit package that includes nearly everything that any consumer is willing to pay for, eliminating this arena of competition. Uniform benefit packages would presumably encourage price competition, not only because it is then the insurers’ only remaining arena of competition, but also because uniform benefits facilitate consumers making price comparisons. However, if government sets global spending caps, adopts mandatory fee schedules, and requires community rating for health insurance premiums, as President Clinton proposes to do, there will be little room left for price competition either. With uniform benefit packages and regulated prices, the managed competition plan ends up with an abundance of management and precious little competition.

National economies worldwide are in disarray, evidenced by escalating debts and growing deficits. As countries struggle with their faltering economies they are hard pressed to fulfill commitments of social programs made in more prosperous times, much less take on new government initiatives. The current experiences in health reform in the United States present an interesting example of the dilemmas governments now face when they embark on new ventures. While great political pressures have been launched and high expectations abound, the reality of American health reform quickly reveals that expanded access will come at a high price that won't be offset easily by conventional cost containment or market forces.

In the search for an acceptable model for health reform, it was popular for policy makers and academics to turn their attentions to the health systems of other nations. Recommendations were made that the US should adopt a German or Canadian solution for our health problems.