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In this opinion piece, H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, asks “a hard question about our business: At what point does it become a crime?”

Welch cites recent reports in the Times and elsewhere about the high cost of drugs, surgical procedures and other medical attention, from “a tube of bacitracin … to $21,000 for a three-hour emergency room evaluation for chest pain caused by indigestion.”

“Medical care is intended to help people, not enrich providers,” Welch writes. “But the way prices are rising, it’s beginning to look less like help than like highway robbery.”

Read the full opinion piece, published 7/4/13 by The New York Times.