Shopping for Health: Medicine and Markets in America

Why do we refer to patients as "consumers" in the United States? Is today's opioid crisis the result of medical consumerism run amok--of pills hawked like soap to gullible shoppers? Is picking a doctor really like choosing a new car? Join us as historians Nancy Tomes and David Herzberg discuss when and why patients started to be called "consumers," and examine the positive and negative aspects of twentieth-century medical "consumerism." We explore a century of efforts to deliver pharmaceutical relief through properly calibrated markets, and evaluate the risks (and often-misunderstood benefits) of governing addictive drugs as consumer goods. Find this presentation and further resources on the Consortium's website at: https://www.chstm.org/video/57