Volume 28, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2008
David M. Craig
Pages 223-243
Religious Values in the Health Care Market
Stories and Structures from Catholic and Jewish Hospitals
USING QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS AT CATHOLIC AND JEWISH HOSPITAL organizations, this essay contrasts the market-driven reforms of consumer-directed health care and physician entrepreneurship with the mission-driven structures of religious nonprofits. A structural analysis of values in health care makes a convoluted system more transparent. It also demonstrates the limitations of market reforms to the extent that they erode organizational structures of solidarity, which are needed to pool risks, shift costs, and maintain safety nets in a complex and expensive health economy.