Lecture Vol. 1 - Tab I & J (2 Lectures ) (Pst SG yrs.) cover
Reflections on Health Care and Remarks to Physicians
By C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
Surgeon General, U.S. Public Health Service
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Oregon Board of Medical Examiners, Oregon Foundation for Medical Excellence
Portland, Oregon
October 6, 1989
In early October 1989, I was invited to Portland, Oregon to address several groups on my reflections on health care. I actually spoke on two occasions on the same day. At noon-time, under the title of "Reflections on Health Care" I spoke to a combined meeting of the Oregon State Board of Medical Examiners, the Oregon Foundation for Medical Excellence and the City Club of Portland. That same evening, I spoke to physicians only under the auspices of the Oregon State Board of Medical Examiners.
Writing this introduction fifteen years after the lectures were given, it strikes me that they are together a very good summary of how I felt about the status of health care and its future, about some remedies that might make the system better, about the growing number of physicians (now increased greatly) who were leaving medicine because they were dissatisfied with the way it was developing. I think the user of this archive, looking at the history of health care reform, might see these two lectures as a place where the Surgeon General at the close of two full-year terms, which followed 39 years in medical practice in the city of Philadelphia, assessed medical practice and health care from the point of view of where we had been and where we could possibly go.
The first lecture is given in its entirety, and in the second lecture, in order to give the user of the archive as complete a view as possible, I am presenting in two parts. The first is 61 pages as I presented them, and the second part covers only the new material that was presented to the board alone.