Marketplace Medicine

This book was written in 1992 and demonstrates with great clarity the vulnerability and bankruptcy of our current healthcare system.  As the United States moves during the 1990s towards serious consideration of a comprehensive, cost- controlled healthcare system available to all, this study of for-profit hospital care will contribute significantly to the discussion.  There is hope that by the beginning of the 21st century in the United States will join virtually all other industrial nations and move rapidly toward a consistently high quality, equitable health care system for all its citizens.
 
In a quiet but far-reaching revolution for profit corporations have taken over almost 25% of the nation's hospitals. The major players – Humana, Hospital Corporation of America, National Medical Enterprises and American Medical International - now determine the quality, cost, and availability of health care for millions of Americans.
In marketplace medicine award-winning investigative journalist Dave Lindorff provides an eye-opening account of money power and politics at the heart of America's healthcare crisis.
Drawing on nearly a decade of research and reporting and filled with startling case histories marketplace medicine reveals the often-hidden motives and practices of the multibillion-dollar healthcare business and the consequences to the health of the American medicine:
How communities lose: by closing local hospitals maternity wards, and emergency rooms, chains have pioneered techniques to avoid treating uninsured patients - now 37 million Americans.
Brand name medicine: how the for- profits woo the wealthy with seductive advertising and luxury services.
The doctor as “employee”: the enticing perks that chains offer physicians may threaten doctors’ objectivity and autonomy.
Academic medicine under siege: why teaching hospitals once fiercely independent may become economic captives of corporate medicine.
Public finance private profit: how Medicare and Medicaid have funded the chains.
The myths of free market: why corporate claims about “competition” and “efficiency” don't translate to lower cost or better care.