Going Public

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.