Health – LPE Project

What’s Value in Health Care? Powerful Companies Make It Hard To Know

Eve Zelickson — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the corporate consolidation and financialization of health care. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** If you take them at their word, drug companies, medical device and software companies, hospitals, and their investors are committed to providing “value” to patients and the public. Gilead, the infectious disease giant, claims its medication prices “reflect the...

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The Same Script: Value-Based Payment, Managed Care, and Neoliberalism

Eve Zelickson — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the corporate consolidation and financialization of health care. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** In 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ushered in a new governing consensus in health care policy. To address persistently high costs and poor outcomes, policymakers sought to break from the “fee-for-service” payment system, which reimburses physicians for...

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A Dialysis Duopoly: How Public Funding Entrenched Private Power

Eve Zelickson — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the corporate consolidation and financialization of health care. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** For the half-million people in the U.S. with kidney failure, survival rests in the hands of two powerful corporations—DaVita and Fresenius. Together, these companies control over 70% of the outpatient dialysis market. But the history of dialysis isn’t a simple...

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State Efforts to Rein in Corporate Medicine

Eve Zelickson — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the corporate consolidation and financialization of health care. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** Large corporations are increasingly dominating American health care, including physician practices. By 2023, nearly 80% of physicians were employed by for-profit hospitals or other corporate entities. For instance, the health insurance behemoth UnitedHealth...

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Consolidating Care: A Symposium on Medicine and Market Power

Eve Zelickson — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post introduces a series on the corporate consolidation and financialization of health care. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** When Luigi Mangione fatally shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson this past December, the internet erupted with declarations of solidarity and anxious calls for condemnation. His vigilante campaign against corporate greed, and subsequent heroization...

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Nursing on Demand: The Gig Economy Comes for Health Care

James Brandt — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000

In 2013, Tim Maughan published a short story called Zero Hours, which describes a day in the life of Nicki, a 19-year-old zero-hour contract worker. Before Nicki gets out of bed, she grabs her tablet and bids “like mad” on various retail shifts. Eventually, she secures shifts at Pret-a-Manager and Boots, a beauty and pharmacy chain—though both shifts pay below the national minimum wage.

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Some of the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship

James Brandt — Thu, 22 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000

With summer just around the corner, are you looking to indulge in some juicy, page-turning scholarship? As always, the Blog has you covered. So throw those Capri-Suns in a cooler, grab your favorite e-reader, and load up some of our favorite forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles for your next trip to the beach, park, or (let’s be real) library. ** ** ** Sahil Agrawal, Melissa Barber...

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Trans Healthcare Bans in a White Nationalist Political Economy

James Brandt — Thu, 01 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post concludes a series on the law and political economy of trans healthcare. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** Mainstream media and political debate often frame transgender healthcare bans as part of an isolated “culture war” affecting only a small sexual minority. As previous posts in this series have explained, this framing fails to account for the role that these bans play in the...

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How Anti-Trans Attacks Forge the Anti-Social State

James Brandt — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the law and political economy of trans healthcare. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** From his campaign ad, “Kamala is for they/them,” to his executive orders defining sex as fixed and binary, decommissioning trans troops, and defunding hospitals that offer gender-affirming healthcare for minors, Trump has made attacks on trans people a prominent feature of...

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The “Gender Identity Industry” & Other Conspiracies

James Brandt — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series on the law and political economy of trans healthcare. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** In recent years, opponents of trans medicine have increasingly presented themselves not as oppressors—intent on denying care to individuals whose gender identity they reject—but rather as the righteous critics of a corrupt “gender identity industry.” Big Pharma and Big Tech...

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