This work highlights how the introduction of third-party payers into medicine has altered the relationship between doctor and patient. In a theocracy, human problems are perceived as religious in nature and susceptible to religious remedies. This book illustrates how in a pharmacracy people perceive human problems as medical in nature and this susceptible to medical remedies. The term "pharmacratic controls" refers to social sanctions exercised by a bureaucratic health-care system, enforced by health-care personnel and exemplified by the wars on diseased and drugs. These pharmacratic controls result in health policies that undermine individual responsibility and liberty by forming an alliance between medicine and the state. This leads to a system that defines abnormal behaviours as diseases and punishments as treatments. Thomas Szasz explains why, despite tremendous scientific advances in medicine, patients are increasingly dissatisfied with the medical care they receive, and doctors with the way they have to practice medicine. In addition to medical policy makers and health-care professionals, this book should be of interest to anyone trying to understand the ins and outs of the US medical system.