Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health

Deepening crises now affect not only the capitalist health system in the United States, but also the national health programs of countries that have achieved universal access to services. In our recent collaborative book, Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health, we analyze these changing structural conditions and argue that the struggle toward viable national health programs now must become part of a struggle to move beyond capitalism. Privatization, cutbacks in public-sector services and institutions, and public subsidization of private profit-making through transfer of tax revenues into private insurance corporations have worsened under neoliberal policies. Financialization of capitalist economies includes the increasingly oligopolistic and financialized character of health insurance, both public and private. Those struggling for just and accessible health systems now need to confront the shifting social class position of health professionals. Due to loss of control over the work process and a reduced ability to generate high incomes compared to other professional workers, the medical profession has become proletarianized. To achieve national health programs that will remain viable over a long term, a much more fundamental transformation needs to reshape not just health care, but also the capitalist state and capitalist society.