Going Public
The Unmaking and Remaking of Universal Healthcare

This Element discusses how corporate players influrnce UHC's analysis and explores social innovation as an approach to advancing UHC.

Ramya Kumar (Author), Anne-Emanuelle Birn (Author)

9781009209571, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 January 2024

102 pages
23 x 15 x 0.5 cm, 0.19 kg

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 primary healthcare (PHC), demonstrating what corporatization does to PHC, within deeply entrenched colonial-capitalist structures and discourses that normalize inferior care, private profit, and dispossession of peoples.

1. Setting the stage
2. Corporatising health for all, step by step
3. Innovating for whose benefit? global health inc.'s ventures in low-income settings
4. Towards healthcare justice in the majority world
5. Conclusion
References.

Subject Areas: Sociology [JHB]