The Corporatization of American Health Care: The Rise of Corporate Hegemony and the Loss of Professional Autonomy

In this book, the authors, as policy analysts, examine the overall context and dynamics of modern medicine, focusing on the changing conditions of medical practice through the lens of corporatization of medicine, physician unionization, physician strikes, and current health policy directions.
Conditions affecting the American medical profession have been dramatically altered by the continuing crises of cost increases, quality concerns, and lack of access facing our population, along with the ongoing corporatization toward bottom-line dictates. Pressures on practitioners have been intensifying with much greater scrutiny over their clinical decision-making. Topics explored among the chapters include:

• History of the Corporatization of American Medicine: The Market Paradigm Reigns
• Pharmaceuticals, Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Drug Store Chains, and Pharmacy Benefit Manager/Insurer Integration
• Medical Practice: From CottageIndustry to Corporate Practice
• Medical Malpractice Crisis: Oversight of the Practice of Medicine
• Big Data: Information Technology as Control over the Profession of Medicine
• Physician Employment Status: Collective Bargaining and Strikes

The Corporatization of American Health Care offers different perspectives with the hopes that physicians will unite in a new awareness and common cause to curtail excessive profit-making, renew professional altruism, restore the charitable impulse to health provider institutions, and unite with other professionals to truly raise levels of population health and the quality of health care. It is also a necessary resource for health policy analysts, healthcare administrators, health law attorneys, and other associated health professions.

J. Warren Salmon, PhD, is an author, researcher, and lecturer. Previously, he was Professor of Health Policy and Administration, School of Public Health, at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He was formerly a Professor in and Head of the Department of Pharmacy Administration, College of Pharmacy; Professor of Public Policy Analysis, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs; and Adjunct Professor of Medical Education, College of Medicine at UIC. Prior to coming to UIC, Professor Salmon held faculty appointments at Thomas Jefferson Medical College and Drexel/Hahnemann Medical College, both in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Professor Salmon’s research interests have focused on the corporatization of medicine and pharmacy, managed care pharmacy, urban healthcare delivery, comparative healthcare systems, global pharmaceutical industry developments, and alternative and complementary medicines, among selected health policy issues. He edited Alternative Medicines: Popular and Policy Perspectives (Tavistock/Methuen/Routledge, 1984); (with Jeffrey W. Todd) The Corporatization of Health Care: A Two Day Symposium and Public Hearing (Illinois Public Health Association, 1988); (with Eberhard Goepel) Community Participation and Empowerment Strategies in Health Promotion, 7 volumes (Zentrum fuer Interdisziplinare Forschung, 1990); The Corporate Transformation of Health Care, Part I: Issues and Directions (Baywood, 1990); The Corporate Transformation of Health Care, Part II: Reflections and Implications (Baywood, 1994); and (with Linda Shapiro) Health Care for Chicagoans: How Will Health System Integration Affect the Health of the Public? (Health & Medicine Policy Research Group, 1995). Dr. Salmon resides in River Forest, Illinois as a still active independent researcher, writer, mentor, and frequent lecturer.

Stephen L. Thompson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Health Studies Department of the College of Professional Studies and Advancement at National Louis University (NLU) in Chicago, Illinois. He is the former Associate Dean and former Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at National Louis University. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Health Policy and Administration in 2000, his Master of Science in Industrial Relations from Loyola University Chicago in 1984, and a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa in 1975. He also completed a program in Respiratory Therapy at Northwestern University Affiliated Programs in 1975, and is a Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT) and a Neonatal/Pediatric Specialist (NPS). He teaches in the Masters of Business Administration, Masters of Health Administration, and the Bachelor of Health Care Leadership programs at NLU. His major interests are in health policy, research methodology, and unions and collective bargaining and organizational theory. He has published in the areas of Collective Bargaining and Physicians, Health Reform, and Privatization of Public Education.