Healthcare in the Age of Finance Capital

How the financialization of healthcare has eroded the quality of care, driven up prices, and worsened health inequalities

Financial actors and healthcare leaders increasingly view healthcare organizations as financial assets to be bought, sold, and managed for maximum profit, regardless of the effects on patient care. Healthcare in the Age of Finance Capital reveals how the federal government enables financial opportunism in healthcare and offers bold ideas for overhauling a failed system.

Rosemary Batt and Eileen Appelbaum provide a unique analysis of the financialization of healthcare, a process in which a growing proportion of the healthcare economy is owned and controlled by the financial sector. Healthcare organizations increasingly depend on financial machinations and the earnings derived from them rather than revenue generated from patient care.

The extent to which financial calculations overshadow the healthcare mission depends importantly on institutional legacies, reimbursement rules, and the failure of regulatory oversight. Batt and Appelbaum show how differences in regulations and financing rules shape whether financial actors can penetrate distinct healthcare segments—from hospitals, nursing homes, and ambulatory care to physician specialties, home health, hospice, and autism services. Nonprofit healthcare is not immune from this financial logic.

Evidence based, accessible, and informed by real-world examples, Healthcare in the Age of Finance Capital sheds critical light on how financial deregulation coupled with the relaxation of health, tax, anti-trust, and labor laws have allowed financially driven actors to exploit public funds for private gain at the expense of healthcare organizations, patients, communities, labor, and taxpayers.