[Should modern medicine become a service industry? An ethical appraisal of a market-oriented medicine]

Currently, modern medicine is undergoing fundamental transformation. Care for the patient has transformed into a client service delivery where patients are perceived as customers. It's not just simple semantics. Rather, such changes reflect a fundamental shift in human and social values and, in particular, in human self-awareness. Health has become the absolute and natural human condition which can and must be claimed and it has become the epitome of an individual's potential. In turn, these changes have a sensitively responding addressee. They affect the moral values and the sense of identity of health care workers and especially of physicians. Thus, it is a network of interlinked external and internal factors that are reshaping the core values and professional identity of medicine. In these times of change it is pivotal to ponder about the basic task of medicine and what medicine is actually meant to be. Replacing health care providers for patients by economically focused traders serving the needs of demanding clients constitutes a shift in paradigm. It is medicine as a health care profession and the specific needs of suffering patients and disabled individuals what is at stake here.