Subprime Health: Debt and Race in US Medicine

FEATURING LESLIE R. HINKSON – You’ve heard of the ‘subprime mortgage’ crisis where homebuyers of color were targeted by banks for high-interest loans. But what about expanding that framing to healthcare and medicine? A new book takes on racial disparities in the delivery and costs of healthcare to examine how medical debt disproportionately impacts people of color.

The book is called Subprime Health: Debt and Race in US Medicine. In it contributors trace how pharmaceutical companies market in specific ways to certain racial groups, as well as how the repayment of medical debt can be viewed within the historical framework of past medical abuses.

While there is an on-going crisis in healthcare in the US, how healthcare, debt, and race intersect ought to be a crucial component of the national dialogue.

Leslie R. Hinkson, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and co-editor with Nadine Ehlers of the book Subprime Health: Debt and Race in US Medicine.

**This segment was originally broadcast on October 24, 2017.