Going Public: The Unmaking and Remaking of Universal Healthcare

by Ramya Kumar, Anne-Emanuelle Birn

This Element highlights the pivotal role of corporate players in universal health coverage ideologies and implementation, and critically examines social innovation-driven approaches to expanding primary care in low-income settings. It first traces the evolving meanings of universal health/healthcare in global health politics and policy, analysing their close, often hidden, intertwining with corporate interests and exigencies. It then juxtaposes three social innovations targeting niche 'markets' for lower-cost services in the Majority World, against three present-day examples of publicly-financed and -delivered PHC, demonstrating what corporatisation does to PHC, within deeply entrenched colonial-capitalist structures and discourses that normalize inferior care, private profit, and dispossession of peoples.

100 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 18, 2024