"This account of the dramatic differences in the organization of health care across three hospitals in one city is a significant addition to our understanding of how the health care system succeeds or fails. The fieldwork, interviews, and observations are absolutely stellar. The book is unique in illuminating both the commoditization of healthcare and resistance to it."
—Fred Block, University of California, DavisThis book is an important resource for academic audiences and professionals in the health disciplines as well as those in the social sciences.
"Dispatching a distress signal about contemporary hospitals, Selling Our Souls is a smart observational study of the uneasy bind in American health care between caring for patients and catering to profits. In rich detail, Reich denotes how soaring overall spending incentivizes institutions to balance professional, commercial, scientific, and religious priorities."—Stefan Timmermans, University of California, Los Angeles
"Analytically sophisticated and deeply humane, Adam Reich's Selling Our Souls takes us inside three worlds of hospital care. No one has done a better job showing how differences in institutions affect the moral life of American medicine today. This is a book that needed to be written and demands to be read."—Paul Starr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Social Transformation of American Medicine
"This exceptionally clear and lively book takes us deep into the heart of the American health care system to observe how doctors, nurses, and administrative staffs in three hospitals respond to market pressures. Selling Our Souls brings to light these institutions' diverse moral-economic contradictions, shaped by their foundational ideals and different resource bases. May this nuanced and comprehensive depiction of the present provide a greater understanding for the future."—Marion Fourcade, University of California, Berkeley
"Today's American hospitals face many pressing concerns regarding solvency, dealing with the uninsured and underinsured, controlling overtreatment, and managing relationships among various personnel. This accessible book provides a close-up view of how three hospitals manage these issues to function within legal and market constraints, and offers a vivid picture of hospital organization in modern America."—Michael Sauder, University of Iowa
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2015
"A lucid investigation into the mission of health care versus the market of health care in three representative examples: a public hospital, a Catholic hospital, and a managed care hospital. The complexities and contradictions of the increasing commodification of health care and hospitals are skillfully and engagingly examined."—Charles Perrow, author of Normal Accidents
Reich has written an excellent book.---Hengameh Hosseini, Political Science Quarterly
"Can markets ever be moral? Adam Reich's eye-opening study of hospital care brings fresh theoretical insight to the tense relationship between economic concerns and health care. Drawing from his close observation of three hospitals, Reich makes an innovative contribution to medical and economic sociology. The book's lessons will captivate not only scholars and policymakers but also patients everywhere."—Viviana A. Zelizer, author of Economic Lives
Kudos to Adam Reich for this well-researched book! Students of medical sociology, as well as health management and policy, will find Selling Our Souls useful.---Okori Uneke, Ph.D., International Social Science Review
