The Political Economy of Health and Healthcare

Health may be defined as a state of balance in our body, mind and soul. When this balance is disturbed, so is our health. However, the balance in our health is fundamentally related to the balance in our society. Imbalances in our societies, particularly of a socioeconomic nature, would naturally affect our inner balance and health. Hence, this book argues that imbalances in the distribution of socioeconomic resources have led to inequities in health both within and between nations. It systematically explores the roots of inequalities in markets as the dominant distributive mechanisms in advanced capitalist economies to show their inherent biases against the poor and less powerful. It also describes the various social protections that have been put in place in the post-war era to protect the vulnerable among us, and documents how such protections have been rolled back with the rise of neoliberalism, especially after the recent financial crisis. It calls for social medicine, both in the sense of understanding health as the outcome of social conditions, and as the necessity of a collective approach for addressing health inequities through a social polity, as it contains the costs and sustains the healthcare systems.