The Book Prize Index

How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death, and Dollars in American Medicine

Tom Mueller

“Inspiring and deeply distressing.” —Ezekiel J. Emanuel, author of Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care? How did a lifesaving medical breakthrough become a for-profit enterprise that threatens many of the people it’s meant to save? Six decades ago, visionary doctors achieved the impossible: the humble kidney, acknowledged since ancient times to be as essential to life as the heart, became the first human organ to be successfully replaced with a machine. Yet huge dialysis corporations, ambitious doctor-entrepreneurs and Beltway lobbyists soon turned this medical miracle into an early experiment in for-profit medicine—and one of the nation’s worst healthcare catastrophes. With powerful insight and on-the-ground reporting, New York Times best-selling author Tom Mueller introduces an unforgettable cast of characters.

Medicine & Public HealthMedicine & Public Health · medium confidenceMedicine & Public Health81 signalsLlm Classifier: Medicine & Public Health -> Medicine & Public HealthKeyword Classifier: American History -> American HistoryTopic Classifier: Business, Capitalism & Corporations -> Business & EconomicsBusiness, Capitalism & CorporationsDeath, Memory & CommemorationHousing, Cities & Urban LifeIntelligence, Secrecy & Surveillance

Award History

0 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism2024FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • American Medicine40%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    A kidney-dialysis breakthrough became a for-profit enterprise that, through actions by corporations and insiders, threatens the people it was meant to save.

    Model confidence 48%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 56%.