How to make a killing : death, dollars and the business of blood

'A terrifying story of profit before patients, and a chilling glimpse of what can happen when private companies are allowed to take charge of healthcare.' Gavin FrancisSix decades ago, researchers achieved the impossible: developing a treatment that transformed kidney failure from a death sentence to a manageable condition.

Yet, in the hands of a predatory medical industry, this triumph led to skyrocketing costs and worsening care. A gripping account of privatised healthcare gone wrong, How to Make a Killing recounts how the optimism of the 1950s and 1960s - when transplants and dialysis machines offered hope - gave way to anguished debates about the ethics of rationing and profiting from life-saving care, and how Big Dialysis proliferated at the expense of its patients. A triumph of investigative research, Tom Mueller's book features an unforgettable cast of characters: CEOs who dress as musketeers to exhort more aggressive profit-seeking, nephrologist insiders who reveal the substandard care this causes, and heroic patients who risk their lives to reveal the truth.