Socialist Register 2010

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, Paula Tibandebage, Shaoguang Wang