In America, there is exactly one universal health program that has somehow escaped the rhetorical alarums about “socialised medicine” . Anyone who needs dialysis for kidney failure can get it, free at the point of use. The service may be provided by big corporations reimbursed by the US government, and the clinics usually in dingy strip-malls between burger joints and nail salons – but this is a good thing overall, isn’t it? It could be, as Tom Mueller’s grimly fascinating and humane exposé shows, were it not for the sector’s rampant corruption, weird CEOs – staff at one corporation are encouraged to dress up as musketeers – and staggering disdain for patients. Dialysis is ruled by a duopoly of publicly traded companies, Fresenius and DaVita, who operate on the model dubbed “fast-food medicine”.…