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Following is a list of articles with excerpts. If you are interested in receiving the full article please email us here.
1. “Healthcare Crisis: One Dentist’s View." Are professional ethics falling prey to cost-containment programs?” CDA Update: Oct. 18, 1993.
“At a dental symposium about PPO insurance, experts debated the profitability of such programs…I asked, ‘Regardless of profitability, is it ethical?’ The reply of…a top spokesman of the profession was, ‘When your financial survival is in question, ethics do not matter.’”
“The crisis of healthcare parallels the crisis of ethics in society…Society is not necessarily falling apart because good people are doing bad things. But good people are conducting business with little regard to ethics, creating an air of ethical compromise and permissiveness that ‘allows’ bad people to do bad things, and our children suffer the consequences.”
2. “Values Education: Waking Up to a Catch-22.” Irvine Magazine: Nov., 1993.
“Expecting our teachers to teach values that we ourselves ignore is expecting miracles of them, and we should pay them accordingly.”
3. “Car Sales, Journalism and Healthcare: Insidious forces affecting the credibility and image of the healthcare profession.” CDA Update: Jan. 18, 1994.
“We need to have a little more courage, or we will be overwhelmed by the ‘insurization of healthcare.’…What have we done or not done, measured against what we could do?”
4. “The Spirit of Excellence: Managed care systems have changed the rules of healthcare." CDA Update: March 23, 1994.
“The spirit of Olympic competition…symbolizes commitment and dedication, the challenge of competition and the exhilaration of victory. It inspires us to rise above mediocrity and do our best, whoever we are, and in whatever we do, especially in a profession entrusted with patients’ health and well being.”
5. “Overpriced Product: Insurance rebating and healthcare—read my ‘Hip-ocrisy’”. CDA Update: Sept. 19, 1994
“Insurance policies punish patients who choose doctors whose values are consistent with the stated values of insurance companies.”
6. “Ethics and the Ostrich Syndrome.” CDA Update: Jan. 18, 1995.
“There are a lot of heads in the sand. But whose are they? Are they those who refuse to see the coming changes in healthcare, or those who refuse to see the ethical compromises associated with managed care, and how they contribute to the escalating ethical crisis in society?”
7. “Lessons from the ‘Facts of Life’”. CDA Update: March 22, 1995
“Managed care is a change, and human nature tends to feel threatened by change and to resist…We need to learn to sort out the good changes from the bad.”
8. “Things Have Changed.” The Clayton Record (Clayton, Ala.): Jan. 4, 1996.
“Things have changed: Reputation does not matter. Fairness does not matter. Trust does not matter. It’s business!...Yes, things have changed. Maybe it’s time to change it back!”
9. “Think a Second Time: Those struggling with the ethical dilemmas of managed care should heed Prager.” CDA Update: March 20, 1996. (Reprinted in Illinois Dental News)
“As a society, we all believe that ethics is important. We all claim to support ethics. Yet society is in an ethics crisis. Will we recognize our responsibility for the crisis? Will we recognize our responsibility for the crisis in our own profession?…Will we stop and ‘think a second time’? Or will we stop and think ethically, for the very first time?”
10. “How Did it Come to This? It’s the Ethics, Stupid.” CDA Update July 17, 1996.
“Slipping ethics…is a problem which clouds our lives at almost every level. We must make a difference. We must raise a ruckus…The only way we can get a ruckus started is to make the point and hope that we can energize opinion.” (Dr. Dale Redig)
“How did it come to this?…The problem was and still is a failure of leadership. The problem is us and our failure to recognize that: It’s the ethics, stupid.”
11. “A Clear Message about Ethics is Sorely Needed.” CDA Update Feb. 14, 1997
“As long as we continue the debate based on reimbursement rate or profitability, we will always be set apart against the interest of the insurance company, the employers, our patients, and everyone else...Only when we base the issue on ethical principles will we share a consensus with them, based on everyone’s core ethical principles.”
12. “A Declaration of Independence.” Dental Economics: Sept. 2002.
“The corporation whose core belief I once applauded now seems to be boosting its bottom line by ‘playing games,’ taking advantage of patients and doctors, and trying to get away with as much as it can in denied benefits. Is that why some patients seem to respond in kind and expect doctors to be ‘creative’ in ‘milking’ the insurance company on their behalf? Who started this game—the doctor, patient, or the insurance companies? …Does it matter? What matters is that we do not become pawns in the game…that we quit the game if we care about our integrity.”
13. “There is Never a Wrong Time to Do the Right Thing.” Dental Economics: Jan., 2004
“If an office accepts a ‘for-profit’ reduced-fee program, that fee should be available to all the patients in the practice. That would alleviate risks of disparate care and ease the access-to-care problem. Patients win. It would compel insurance programs to set reasonable reimbursement rates. We win. And insurance companies can be confident that the dentists who sign on with them accept their reimbursement as reasonable and fair, and would have no incentive to ‘game’ the system. Insurance wins.”
14. “Confused over the Ethics of Managed Care.” Dental Economics: June 2006.
“When it comes to the ethics of managed care, are we all ‘confused?’ How can we bring some ethical clarity into the issue? What happens to our profession, our society, and our children’s future if we don’t? I hope we don’t find that question confusing.”
15. “What if Everyone Does It? Then We Have a Better World.” Orange County Dental Society Impressions: Mar/Apr 09.
“With a new President who inspires us to believe that inconceivable change is possible if we are willing to do our part, how do we fit in? What if everyone creates an ethics-centered practice?…Will we have a better world?”
16. “Healthcare Reform Through Ethical Lens” OCDS Impressions: Sept/Oct. 09.
“Would we rather support insurance company’s business strategy aimed at maximizing their profit at our expense; or healthcare reform aimed at providing for citizens who need care? Which one is an ethical imperative?...In the healthcare debate, is our heart in the right place?”
17. “Ethics—It’s Not This Way Out There” OCDHS Newsletter, Mar. 2010.
“When it comes to upholding ethics in dental offices with PPO’s in the ‘real world’, it seems that (hygiene) students are on their own.”
18. “Are You Preferred?” OCDHS Newsletter, September, 2010.
“Do we really want the insurance industry to anoint us as ‘preferred’? Would we rather that our patients tell us that they ‘prefer’ us by freely choosing our practice…? Ultimately, isn’t that how we will excel as a…profession?”
19. “Even Kids Know…It’s a Piece of Junk” Not published.
When insurance offers us discount insurance programs that are “just as good”…don’t we see that, ethically speaking, “It’s a piece of junk?”
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