A front-row seat as a healthcare system goes awry

Over a long medical career, Robert L. Martensen, MD, has been an emergency room and intensive care unit physician, and has taught bioethics and medical history at Harvard Medical School and Tulane University in New Orleans. Recently, Martensen wrote a critique of the American healthcare system, A Life Worth Living: A Doctor’s Reflections on Illness in a High-Tech Era. In this Q and A with the New York Times, Martensen discusses the state of the the U.S. healthcare system.