The Financialization of Health in the United States

From early fears of a burgeoning medical-industrial complex¹ to more recent critiques of corporate greed in medicine,² observers have long decried the profit motives embedded in the U.S. health care system. While much of the focus has been on corporate influences in health care, a critical dynamic has remained largely obscured: financialization. As defined by social scientists and historians, financialization refers to the growing influence of financial markets, motives, institutions, and elites in our economy and society.³ This dynamic encompasses the expanding influence of financial actors - including commercial and investment banks, private equity (PE) firms, venture capital firms, and other types of investors - and a shift in the business of non-financerelated entities away from trade and commodity production toward new financial channels and maneuvers.⁴