Organized Medicine: "The Enemy Is Us"

In the Jan.-Feb. Hastings Center Report [full text free], Sandra Johnson explains how it is not so much the law that "forces" clinicians to provide futile treatment, as much as "private organizational structures."  

The law, she argues, operates in a "practice context" in which "organizational policies . . . [are] designed to put a safe distance between the organization and legal risk."  In short, Johnson argues that it is often not the law that makes clinicians do "bad things."  Instead, it is the "excessive private enforcement" from overly risk averse organizational policies.