Q&A: Why corporatization of health care gets too much of a bad rap

Medical Xpress October 2, 2025
Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

Frustrated by the relentless rise in health care costs, many Americans think they know who’s to blame for the high cost of prescription drugs, the shuttering of local hospitals and clinics, and the merger of their favorite doctor’s medical practice with a competitor: for-profit corporations and private equity firms.

This growing trend in the U.S. is known as corporatization. Investors supply much-needed funding to pharmaceutical and biomedical companies, health care institutions, and physicians to help pay for drug development, meet escalating expenses, and increase efficiency and scale. But too often, critics say, the push for profit ends up leaving patients with reduced quality and choice, and ever-surging costs.

In a new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, co-author...

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