How the United States exports managed care to developing countries.
As their expansion slows in the United States, managed care organizations will continue to enter new markets abroad. Investors view the opening of managed care in Latin America as a lucrative business opportunity. As public-sector services and social security funds are cut back, privatized, and reorganized under managed care, with the support of international lending agencies such as the World Bank, the effects of these reforms on access to preventive and curative services will hold great importance throughout the developing world. Many groups in Latin America are working on alternative projects that defend health as a public good, and similar movements have begun in Africa and Asia. Increasingly, this organizing is being recognized not only as part of a class struggle but also as part of a struggle against economic imperialism--which has now taken on the new appearance of rescuing less developed countries from rising health care costs and inefficient bureaucracies through the imposition of neoliberal managed-care solutions exported from the United States.
Waitzkin
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Division of Community Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque 87131, USA.
Iriart
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D003906:Developing Countries / Q000191:economics; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational / Q000191:economics; D016520:Entrepreneurship / Q000639:trends*; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000191:economics; D019981:Health Care Sector / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D007843:Latin America; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011057:Politics; D012945:Social Values; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000191:economics / Q000639:trends; D014480:United Nations / Q000191:economics*; D014481:United States