SELLING OUR SOULS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF HOSPITAL CARE IN THE UNITED STATES
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12195 |
| Author | MARLOT KUIPER |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12195
REVIEWS
SELLING OUR SOULS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF HOSPITAL CARE IN THE
UNITED STATES
Adam D. Reich
Princeton University Press, 2014, 233 pp., £27.95/€39.50(hb), ISBN: 9780691160405
Healthcare has become an immensely popular eld for research among scholars from var-
ious academic backgrounds. In recent years, many inuential books about transitions in
hospital care have been published (for the US context see e.g. Feldman 2000; Cannon and
Tanner 2007; Christensen 2008). Adam Reich contributes to this popular domain with his
book Selling Our Souls: The Commodication of Hospital Care in the United States.
In the introduction to his book, Reich convincingly explains both the value of research-
ing the healthcare system and the contribution his book makes to the eld, which is no
luxury for yet another book about hospital care. First, the author emphasizes that we all
are, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on care delivered at hospitals. It is not only a
place where most of us are born and will die, Reich argues; it is also a place we turn to in
times of greatest physical uncertainty and emotional vulnerability. Next, nearly one-fth
of US GDP is spent on this scarce source and basic need. Finally, what makes the health-
care system all the more interesting to probe into is the period of great turbulence and
drastic change in which the eld is caught up. According to the author, this book con-
tributes to the existing literature on the relationship between morals and markets. Reich
argues that within contemporary hospital organizations, actors try to align their social
values and economic activities. However, they face severe constraints. Their social values,
originating from different historical understandings of hospital care, are ‘bad matches’
(Fourcade 2012) with contemporary market demands. Reich illustrates how actors strug-
gle with these conicts in different ways, and with different effects.
Until the 1970s, US healthcare was a clear and well-organized eld; professionally domi-
nated, backed by the power of the state. The state exercised hegemonic control over health-
care, deciding who could perform which services and how these services were nanced.
From the 1970s onwards, followed by a peak in the 1990s, critiques about rising govern-
ment expenditures catalyzed drastic changes. The dominant form of service provision
characterized by independent, voluntary hospitals had ‘gone with the wind’ (Scott 1993,
p. 271, as cited by Scott et al. 2000, p. 1). New ways of delivering services, new ways
of paying for care, new types of healthcare organizations and cooperative and competi-
tive relations between them mean that scholars speak of ‘hyper turbulence’ (Meyer et al.
1993) and ‘the managed care revolution’ (e.g. Sullivan 1999). To elucidate the focus of his
study, Reich quotes historian Rosemary Stevens, who states that hospitals ‘carry the bur-
den of unresolved, perhaps unresolvable contradictions’ (Stevens 1999, as cited by Reich
Selling Our Souls, p. 1) that arose from these far-reaching changes. These contradictions
form the starting point of Reich’s study.
The book examines the contradictory nature of the commodication of hospital care
by drawing on extensive qualitative case studies of three non-prot hospitals within the
Public Administration Vol.93, No. 4, 2015 (1184–1188)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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