Medical Bills and Moral Dilemmas: Luke Messac Explores ’Your Money or Your Life’ in American Healthcare

In today's episode I speak with Luke Messac MD PhD, historian and author of Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine.

In his clinical work, Luke is an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. His research focuses on the history and political economy of health care. 

His first book, No More to Spend (Oxford University Press, 2020), is a history of medical neglect and exploitation in Malawi. Today's discussion focuses on the history of medical debt collection in the United States. This book, titled Your Money or Your Life was published in 2023. It tells the story of how the collection of medical debt in the United States has transformed over the last several decades, and the impact this is having on Americans’ lives.