Socialist Register 2010: Morbid Symptoms

Health care today is the object of struggle between commercial forces seeking to make it a field of capital accumulation and popular forces fighting to keep it ??? or make it ??? a public service with equal access for all. This volume focuses on the historical economic social and political determinants of health under capitalism. The sources at work in a broad range of national health care systems are examined to explain: the limitations of the Obama administration???s plans for ending the scandal of the US health system; how Europe???s public healthcare systems are being converted into commodified markets; workplace struggles for control in Canada???s publicly-funded healthcare system; systemic gender discrimination in the health systems of sub-Saharan Africa; how the Gates Fund and other international agencies have undermined the WHO???s aim of ???health for all???; and how domestic class configurations in a country like India have reinforced this. The volume also examines: Cuba???s egalitarian health policies at home and abroad; China???s dramatic shift away from universal basic health care and its recent recommitment to this; and how we can learn from HIV/AIDS mobilisations to build a comprehensive public health movement. The volume demonstrates that the nature of health care will be determined by the outcome of the fundamental conflict between commodification and solidarity. CONTRIBUTORS: Robert Albritton Kalman Applbaum Hugh Armstrong Pat Armstrong Sanjay Basu David Coburn Hans-Ulrich Deppe Julie Feinsilver Marie Gottschalk Julian Tudor Hart Lesley Hermann Meri Koivusalo Colin Leys Rodney Loeppky Maureen Mackintosh Mohan Rao