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Colin Leys and Colin Hay: Market-Driven Politics and the Depoliticisation of Healthcare

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The Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine
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Abstract

Medicine may be age-old but healthcare is not. As a system of organised service provision, healthcare is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. In spite of (often significant) sub-national differences, broadly speaking there have been two distinct eras in Canada which divide the post-war sociopolitical organisation of public healthcare services: the initial Keynesian welfare state model of de-commodified services and public insurance provision and the current neo-liberal mode of increasingly private, for-profit, commodified health services, which erode the spirit of a collectively oriented public system. Here, the historical bifurcation will be approached from a political economy perspective by linking Colin Leys’ description of ‘market-driven politics’ with Colin Hay’s theory of depoliticisation.

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© 2015 Heather Whiteside

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Whiteside, H. (2015). Colin Leys and Colin Hay: Market-Driven Politics and the Depoliticisation of Healthcare. In: Collyer, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355621_25

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