Consumer expectations and access to health care

Americans-some of them at least-enjoy a remarkable range of expectations about their health care. They have come to rely on free choice of physicians, on autonomy and the doctrine of informed consent to care, on the belief that they can get the best care money can buy, on the assumption that resources will be available to pay for that care, and perhaps even on the hope that death can be cheated for at least a little while. But these expectations are fragile for those who have them, and they are not shared by many others.