From Health Services to Medical Markets: The Commodity Transformation of Medical Production and the Nonprofit Sector

In recent years the language and logic of medical care have moved from providing medical services to marketing product lines. Analysis in this article examines this task transformation and its implications for transformation of the nonprofit sector and of the state. The authors argue that these transformations are essential explanatory elements to account for the origins of medical services in the nonprofit sector, the early exclusion of capitalist organizations from hospital care, and the changes that fostered corporate entry. To wit, medical care tasks have undergone a two-stage transformation. The first transformation changed open-ended, ill-defined services with uncertain funding into more highly organized and codified services with stable funding, attracting both capitalist enterprises and capitalist logic into the nonprofit sector. The second transformation standardized medical care tasks into product lines, a process that also challenged the status of the nonprofit organizations performing these tasks. In an analysis of the second transformation, the authors argue that this challenge is in the process of turning back upon itself, undermining the conditions that fostered capitalist entry into medical care delivery in the first place.