Hospital Privileges

In a Colorado ski resort town, two doctors die under mysterious circumstances, while their deaths are reported as little more than a "tragic accident." However, a local police detective named Scotty Corrigan, is suspicious of the deaths. During his investigation, he contacts Mark Adams, a doctor in a resort town in Utah for help in the case. Unbeknownst to the police officer, Adams begins to do an informal investigation of the deaths on his own and discovers something more frightening that anything he has ever encountered. Suddenly, he is propelled into a world where there is no distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, and where power and wealth determine everything -- the world of corporate health care, where the bottom line is the dollar. He frantically turns to the only person he knows. When his information lands in the wrong hands in Washington D.C., a race begins between the pursuit of truth and justice -- and his very own life.

"[This book is] the most authoritative assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of recent trends toward the commercialization of health care," says Robert Pear of The New York Times. This major study by the Institute of Medicine examines virtually all aspects of for-profit health care in the United States, including the quality and availability of health care, the cost of medical care, access to financial capital, implications for education and research, and the fiduciary role of the physician. In addition to the report, the book contains 15 papers by experts in the field of for-profit health care covering a broad range of topicsâ€"from trends in the growth of major investor-owned hospital companies to the ethical issues in for-profit health care. "The report makes a lasting contribution to the health policy literature." â€"Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

Between 1890 and 1910 scientific and technological innovation transformed the custodial Victorian charity hospital for the sick poor into the primary source of effective acute medical care for all members of society. For the next half century hospitals coped with relentlessly escalating demands for accessibility by both medical indigents and a new clientele of patients able and willing to pay for hospitalization. With limited statutory revenues and unpredictable voluntary support, hospitals taxed paying patients through ever-increasing user fees, offering in return privacy, comfort, service, and medical attendance in private and semi-private wards that were more appealing to middle-class patients than the stark and grudging service of the public wards.