by Tom Mueller
First published 2023
Six decades ago, doctors achieved a medical miracle. They made the kidney the first human organ successfully replaced by a machine. This breakthrough promised to save countless lives. Instead, dialysis became a corporate nightmare that threatens the patients it should protect. New York Times bestselling author Tom Mueller exposes how visionary medical care transformed into predatory business. He follows heroic patients who risk everything to expose mistreatment, including a Hollywood stuntman who becomes a whistleblower. An unpaid activist in a south Georgia trailer park battles to prevent patients from losing their lifesaving care. Industry insiders destroy their careers to reveal endemic wrongs and pervasive inequality. Mueller shows how a New York salesman's dramatic stunt on the House floor led Congress to make kidney disease the only condition covered by Medicare for all. This decision opened financial floodgates for Big Dialysis corporations. The system disproportionately harms Black and Latino patients, reflecting deeper racial divides in American medicine. Mueller argues that fixing dialysis offers a path to repairing the entire dysfunctional healthcare system.
Genres: medical, business, politics, non-fiction, activism, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: social-activism, whistleblower
Setting: New York, South Georgia
Period: Six Decades Ago
288 pages · Hardcover · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: racism