# Corporate Profits and the Health of Americans

## TL;DR

The paper argues that corporate profit motives harm public health in the U.S. by driving policies and practices that lead to preventable deaths and health disparities.

## Contribution

The paper provides a unified framework linking corporate profit maximization to health outcomes across multiple sectors.

## Key findings

- Profit-driven incentives in industries like healthcare and pharmaceuticals contribute to over one million deaths annually.
- Corporate influence on public policy worsens poverty and inequality, which are key determinants of health.
- A unified systems-level account shows how profit-first governance undermines population health.

## Abstract

A large and growing empirical literature documents that privatization, deregulation, financialization, and under-regulation of harmful industries are associated with adverse health outcomes in the United States. However, this evidence remains fragmented across sectors and rarely articulates a unifying causal framework. This paper advances the literature by integrating findings across health care, harmful-product industries, and economic and social policy to demonstrate that corporate profit maximization functions as a cross-cutting driver of health disparities and premature mortality in the United States. We synthesize evidence showing that profit-driven incentives shape insurance markets, hospital and physician practice ownership, pharmaceutical marketing, and the aggressive promotion of tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, opioids, firearms, and fossil fuels—together contributing to more than one million deaths annually. We further document how corporate influence over public policy has increased poverty, economic inequality, and discrimination, all of which are powerful social determinants of health. In contrast to sector-specific analyses, this paper presents a unified, systems-level account of how profit-first governance undermines population health. We conclude by describing how a social movement to achieve a single payer system that provides Medicare for All would not only vastly improve public health, it would be a catalyst for numerous other reforms that enhance the general wellbeing.