I don’t think much of Paul Krugman as a stylist or Sunday talk show guest (why is he so tame and shifty-eyed?), but he’s been terrific lately at pointing out the ways in which our country remains inexorably divided by economic interests. In his latest blog post he takes on a particularly venomous myth: that medicine is a business.
Humanizing The Vacuum 
I think what you’re both saying is that you wish medicine weren’t a business, the way policing or public education aren’t businesses. But I can’t see any sense in which, in America, medicine isn’t a business. Surely a service doesn’t cease to be a business because its providers are supposed to abide by some ethical code, or because, as Krugman suggests, there are TV shows about heroic practitioners of the occupation. That’s true of all sorts of businesses – for example, law. For that matter, take pharmaceuticals. Clearly a business, but one where much in the way of ethics is expected.