Profits over care? An analysis of the relationship between corporate capitalism in the healthcare industry and cancer mortality in the United States.

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  • Author(s): Perry T;Perry T; Bernasek A; Bernasek A
  • Source:
    Social science & medicine (1982) [Soc Sci Med] 2024 May; Vol. 349, pp. 116851. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Apr 12.
  • Publication Type:
    Journal Article
  • Language:
    English
  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: Pergamon Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 8303205 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1873-5347 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 02779536 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Soc Sci Med Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Original Publication: Oxford ; New York : Pergamon, c1982-
    • Subject Terms:
      Capitalism* ; Neoplasms*/mortality ; Health Care Sector*/economics; Humans ; United States/epidemiology ; Drug Industry/economics ; Medicaid/statistics & numerical data ; Medicaid/economics ; Insurance, Health/statistics & numerical data ; Insurance, Health/economics
    • Abstract:
      The characteristic features of 21st-century corporate capitalism - monopoly and financialization - are increasingly being recognized by public health scholars as undermining the foundations of human health. While the "vectors" through which this is occurring are well known - poverty, inequality, climate change among others - locating the root cause of this process in the nature and institutions of contemporary capitalism is relatively new. Researchers have been somewhat slow to study the relationship between contemporary capitalism and human health. In this paper, we focus on one of the leading causes of death in the United States; cancer, and empirically estimate the relationship between various measures of financialization and monopoly in the US healthcare system and cancer mortality. The measures we focus on are for the hospital industry, the health insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical industry. Using a fixed effects model with different specifications and control variables, our analysis is at the state level for the years 2012-2019. These variables include data on population demographic controls, social and economic factors, and health behavior and clinical care. We compare Medicaid expansion states with non-Medicaid expansion states to investigate variations in state-level funded health insurance coverage. The results show a statistically significant positive correlation between the HHI index in the individual healthcare market and cancer mortality and the opioid dispensing rate and cancer mortality.
      (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)
    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20240420 Date Completed: 20240508 Latest Revision: 20240508
    • Publication Date:
      20240509
    • Accession Number:
      10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116851
    • Accession Number:
      38642520