Hospitals often advertise their state-of-the-art technology as an incentive for patients to choose their facility over a competitor, presumably on the assumption that technology is the highest good medicine has to offer. The July 2006 issue look beyond technology, posing the question, “What is the state of the art of healing in modern medicine?” The clinical cases examine some of the many aspects of 21st-century health care delivery in the U.S. that interfere in the patient-physician relationship. These may take the form of a pager that does not stop beeping, a patient who is skeptical of the medical profession or even a young medical student's struggle to balance the art of healing with technical ability.