Healthcare challenges and transformations under neoliberalism

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

In this panel we explore how neoliberal transformations bring profound consequences for healthcare systems. In the first paper, we see how social consciousness around health issues is neutralized, transforming health concerns into an individual problem, and stimulating the business of health care. The second paper explores how the growing business of medical tourism may have highly concentrated economic benefits but the health impacts on most of the population can be devastating. The third paper looks at how Colombian hospitals either had to transform their institutional culture to a for-profit orientation or were forced to close down. The fourth paper provides a ray of hope as it describes Venezuela’s Barrio Adentro program, driven by solidarity rather than profit.

Sub Track

• Health and Society

Session Organizer

• Doris Grinspun, Registered Nurses Association of Ontario

Chair

• Jaime LLambias-Wolff, York University

Individual Presentations

• Legal institutionality in the establishment of a market model of health care in Chile: 1973–1989 - Jaime LLambias-Wolff, York University

• Expanding medical tourism in the Americas: Economic benefit or health curse? - Doris Grinspun, Registered Nurses Association of Ontario

• Unbillable and formidable care: Child and maternity health care during neoliberalism in Colombia - Cesar E Abadia-Barrero, University of Connecticut

• Barrio Adentro: The first twelve years of a model of South South egalitarian cooperation - Carles Muntaner Bonet, University of Toronto; Maria E Páez Victor