Corporate medicine vs. liberty and democracy

Comment published on New York Times blog on November 16, 2018, in response to opinion essay by Kim Brooks, ”America is blaming pregnant women for their own deaths”:

Doctors in some countries are concerned above all with providing medical care to the persons who are their patients. In America, they are likely to instead think of themselves as serving a grand abstract deity, "health," with which their own profession is identified, as it sets the norms of treatment in light of which doctors make decisions that affect people's lives but that can be made without their knowledge or consent. You give up most of your rights when you submit yourself to any kind of medical care, including rights of participation. An obvious case of this is psychiatry, but it is true broadly in the system. 

Patients are given what they "need" according to their doctors. "Need," like "health," is a norm that can easily be determined by an expert and be contrary to what you want. Even people paying much for a service find that it is as if they are working for the doctors, and not they for her or him. 

If health care serves goals decided by doctors, why can't they decide that a pregnancy is "about" the child, and not the mother at all? Abortion laws often say this, too.  

Our society is largely governed by a professional-ocracy of experts, and most organized activities devoted to doing any good are corrupted by the rule of profit. What people "need" is decided accordingly. As a result, institutional and social life is non-democratic, and the provision of needs is reduced in the name of efficiency and of what may be the wrong objects or goals.