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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses a key channel of financialisation of healthcare, Public-Private Partnerships. It pays particular attention to the World Bank’s role in promoting PPPs, which are being presented as an apt strategy to overcome an acute funding gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1950s, most social security and human rights declarations make reference to the right to health, maintaining that physical and mental well-being are essential for human progress. Alongside the necessity to pay close attention to the social determinants of health and related social service delivery systems, the provision of healthcare is at the heart of realising the right to health. More recently, though, an ambition to deliver comprehensive healthcare to all citizens via public provisioning systems has been replaced by calls for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The promotion of UHC entails a lesser focus on how healthcare services are provided and financed compared to earlier ambitions to universal and publicly funded and provided healthcare. Notably, the World Bank is at the forefront of encouraging an increased role for the private sector in national healthcare systems. Crucially, however, the World Bank’s efforts are no longer only targeted at increasing the role of non-financial private actors in healthcare. Rather, national healthcare systems are becoming more and more exposed to globalised finance. While there are a range of channels via which the financialisation of healthcare manifests, this paper discusses a more and more commonly employed strategy to increase the involvement of financial private actors in healthcare, namely Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs). It pays particular attention to the World Bank’s role in promoting the PPP approach, which is being presented as an apt strategy to overcome an acute funding gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, despite an absence of evidence of their advantageousness.