As with so many (if not all) of the problems we discuss in this course, I would say that there is a multifactoral thing going on. In many cases the most obvious answer might be that we have healthcare practitioners who are simply in their profession for the wrong reasons. Unfortunately, and despite so many deterrents and "weeding out" processes, many people go into medicine for all the wrong reasons (e.g. prestige, reputation, money, etc.), and it isn't difficult to imagine that people who are motivated by these things are probably not going to provide their patients with the same level of care that is provided by physicians or nurses who are simply driven by the urge to make someone's life better.
In contrast, there are many clinicians who are willing and eager to provide the highest quality of care possible, but they may be unable to do so because of a lack of funding, under-staffed hospitals, shortage of equipment or other resources. We all know about some of the huge disparities in the quality of healthcare from one population to another, even within the same city. I cannot help thinking that one of the de facto effects of having a healthcare system like that of the U.S. will inherently be an uneven distribution of medical resources which provides the highest quality of care only for those who can afford to pay for it.
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