“Nora Kenworthy's excellent book exposes the failings of digital crowdfunding in America's dysfunctional health system, showing it to be ineffective, inefficient, inequitable, and totally incompatible with the goal of achieving universal health coverage.”
Robert Yates, Executive Director, Centre for Universal Health, Chatham House
“A compelling case for a world where health is no longer outsourced to 'the kindness of strangers' but is instead supported by our renewed commitment to justice, equity, and the common good.”
Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
“With moral urgency and compelling clarity, Kenworthy offers a searing indictment of the symbiosis between Big Healthcare and Big Tech that allows them to grind out their billions off the backs millions of Americans, offering a clearer picture of just how many industries are in on the exploitation of the American patient.”
Abdul El-Sayed, Towsley Policymaker in Residence, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan; author of Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide
“A critically important book for anyone interested in what our healthcare system is really doing to patients and their families. Nora Kenworthy skillfully weaves together patient stories and penetrating analyses to explore the dark side of a crowdfunding phenomenon fed by unaffordable medical care that is deepening inequalities and perpetuating disturbing ideas about who deserves help in our society.”
Noam N. Levey, Senior Correspondent, KFF Health News
“In this important book, Kenworthy explores why crowdfunding has become so prominent in social support systems and how it transforms practices of care, distributions of responsibility, and forms of precarity, exacerbating inequities as ordinary people encounter the financial toxicities of America's healthcare systems.”
Ruth J. Prince, Professor in Medical Anthropology, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo
“The book is a powerful exposition on the morality of an economic and charitable system that forces the most vulnerable to become, at their moment of greatest and often tragic need, digital campaigners on behalf of Big Healthcare. Crowded Out also illustrates how the rise of crowdfunding, just like donor-advised funds, is yet another chapter in the financialization of charity, amassing private profits under the guise of doing public good.”
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
