Decommodifying and Humanizing Health Care: Revisiting Pellegrino's Ethical Imperative

Policy Points A quarter of a century since bioethicist Edmund Pellegrino warned about the commodification of health and health care, the problem has significantly worsened. Commodification of health and health care objectifies and dehumanizes people and undermines core concepts of holistic person-centered health, much less core human rights, including fulfillment of human potential and comprehensive health care. Multilevel sustained strategies and multisector coalitions are required to decommodify and humanize health and health care based on mental models, national and state policies, practices, resource flow, power dynamics, and relationships and connections.

Edmund Pellegrino warned about the growing commodification of health and health care in the United States. After twenty-five years, it is worth revisiting Pellegrino's critique and examining this critique in the current era.

We conducted a targeted review of the literature to revisit the state of commodification in health and health care as defined by Pellegrino, examined its relationship to dehumanization, and explored prospects for addressing commodification.

The commodification of health and health care substantially worsened in the US, characterized by increased health care corporatization and consolidation, biomedical lobbying, and unaffordable costs. Commodification and dehumanization reinforce each other, undermining rights to health and health care, the provision of holistic person-centered health, and the fulfillment of human potential. Decommodifying and humanizing health and health care requires a paradigm shift towards whole-person definitions of health; the acknowledgement of human relationships as a foundation; the recognition of health as a social good; and the need for society and healthcare to partner to optimize health, including providing health care to all.

This paradigm shift will require collective, cross-sectoral advocacy and mobilization not only by diverse health care professional organizations but also by organizations outside health care that are committed to improving health for all.