Experimental evidence of physician social preferences

Physicians routinely face trade-offs among their own interests, the interests of their patients, and society’s interest in preserving medical resources. To manage these trade-offs, society relies on both traditional professional ethics and bureaucratic monitoring and control. Our results—that physicians are twice as likely to be altruistic as all other samples but indistinguishable from the general population in terms of equality–efficiency orientation—suggest that professional norms can meaningfully contribute to physicians putting patients first and highlight the importance of nurturing these norms of physician professionalism. However, our findings also suggest that policymakers may not rely on physician professionalism to ensure an efficient allocation of medical resources.