Legal institutionality in the establishment of a market model of health care in Chile: 1973–1989

• In Event: Healthcare challenges and transformations under neoliberalism

Abstract

This paper discusses health legislation in Chile within the process of creating a neoliberal market approach, which represented a rupture to the welfare state and the introduction of a new rationality. Following this new logic, social consciousness around health issues was being neutralized, making health concerns an individual problem, which facilitated the atomization of society and stimulated the business of health care. It analyses the principles, doctrine, legislation and regulations that permitted and promoted the establishment of a market model for health care in Chile after the 1973 coup d’état and demonstrates how the legal changes were aimed at the following objectives: the partial withdrawal of the state from the health sector, the creation of a market favourable to the flourishing of the private sector, and finally, the growth and development of the operational structure of the private health sector.

Author

• Jaime LLambias-Wolff, York University