is a common good

The 2021 National Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report recognized that high-quality primary care is not a commodity “whose value needs to be demonstrated in a competitive marketplace.” Rather, primary care is common good, and as such, it must be “promoted by responsible public policy and supported by private-sector action.”

In “Forging a social movement to dismantle entrenched power and liberate primary care as a common good,” Grumbach expands on this idea. He asserts that we “must take power back from interests profiting from the status quo” and reorient the the healthcare system to one “grounded in healing relationships in primary care.” To do this, he argues that family physicians must embrace “counterculture professionalism,” and “join with patients, community members, primary care workers, and other allies to build a broad-based social movement demanding a fundamental restructuring of the health system.