Market-Driven System Unhealthy for Patients

“Numbers Game Is Bad Medicine” (Opinion, Nov. 24) is not a service to your readers. Dr. Scott Gottlieb’s notion that lives are threatened by timid surgeons is simply absurd. He knows full well that in our market-driven health-care system the decision to operate depends more on reimbursement than risk. He asserts that analysis of practice patterns is misleading and that the “government’s heavy-handed tactics” make surgeons afraid to take on tough cases. This is pure baloney.

It is true that a centrally managed bureaucracy is not the way to improve health care. But Gottlieb’s only positive idea, that patients ought to gain enough surgical knowledge to make better treatment decisions, is just a pipe dream. Please spare us these polemic defenses of free-market medicine, even when they feature a tasty anecdote in the intro.

Sid Siegel MD

Covina