Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine

by Nadine Ehlers (Editor), Leslie R. Hinkson (Editor)

Overview

From race-based pharmaceutical prescriptions and marketing, to race-targeted medical “hot spotting” and the Affordable Care Act, to stem-cell trial recruitment discourse, Subprime Health is a timely examination of race-based medicine as it intersects with the concept of debt. 

The contributors to this volume propose that race-based medicine is inextricable from debt in two key senses. They first demonstrate how the financial costs related to race-based medicine disproportionately burden minorities, as well as how monetary debt and race are conditioned by broader relations of power. Second, the contributors investigate how race-based medicine is related to the concept of indebtedness and is often positioned as a way to pay back the debt that the medical establishment—and society at large—owes for the past and present neglect and abuses of many communities of color. By approaching the subject of race-based medicine from an interdisciplinary perspective—critical race studies, science and technology studies, public health, sociology, geography, and law—this volume moves the discussion beyond narrow and familiar debates over racial genomics and suggests fruitful new directions for future research. 

Contributors: Ruha Benjamin, Princeton U; Catherine Bliss, U of California, San Francisco; Khiara M. Bridges, Boston U; Shiloh Krupar, Georgetown U; Jenna M. Loyd, U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Anne Pollock, Georgia Tech.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517901493
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	07/15/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Nadine Ehlers teaches in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. She is author of Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection. 

Leslie R. Hinkson is assistant professor of sociology at Georgetown University.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Race-Based Medicine and the Specter of Debt

Nadine Ehlers and Leslie R. Hinkson 

Part I: Race-Based Medicine and Monetary Debt

1. The High Cost of Having Hypertension while Black in America

Leslie R. Hinkson

2. “When Treating Patients Like Criminals Makes Sense”: Medical Hot Spotting, Race, and Debt

Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar

3. Obamacare and Sovereign Debt: Race, Reparations, and the Haunting of Premature Death

Jenna M. Loyd

4. BiDil’s Compensation Relations

Anne Pollock

Part II: Race-Based Medicine and Indebtedness

5. The Meaning of Health Disparities

Catherine Bliss

6. What Do We Owe Each Other? Moral Debts and Racial Distrust in Experimental Stem Cell Science

Ruha Benjamin and Leslie R. Hinkson

7. Lessons from Racial Medicine: The Group, the Individual, and the Equal Protection Clause

Khiara M. Bridges

Conclusion: Freedom from Debt?

Leslie R. Hinkson and Nadine Ehlers  

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine deftly bridges the space between these two words. Drawing on the rich knowledge of eight professors of sociology and cultural studies, this collection of essays perceptively examines the manifestation of race and racism in the American medical institution."—British Journal of Sports Medicine

"Subprime Health documents how the race-based medicine reframes race as a biological phenomena that organizes medical knowledge and practice along racial lines, and in ways that are both historically situated and profoundly novel. Readers will leave informed of the history and practice of race-based medicine, and its significance to Black health and life in the United States."—Antipode

"The authors provide unique insights into the delivery of care in the world’s best acute care system, revealing that ultimately, race does matter in the cost, access, and quality of care delivered in the US. The authors provide practical recommendations for professionals on how to treat each patient as an individual with unique medical conditions and health needs."—CHOICE

"The focus on debt is the book’s most valuable contribution, holding significant potential for making sense of the uneven distributions of accountability that shape relations between selves and society across entrenched imbalances of power." —Somatosphere

"This is a challenging piece that provides much needed attention to the multiple problems plaguing pharmacogenomics and its dalliance with the race concept." —Social History of Medicine

From the Publisher