Global Political Economy of Health.

This paper seeks to locate health care governance within the broader international political economy (IPE) whereby access to health resources is viewed as structurally determined and reflective of the emergence of global markets in many facets of human life. In the main, IPE as a discipline has so far largely ignored health as a key and compelling issue in global life, and part of the overall logic of this chapter and book is to correct this failure. In particular, IPE’s traditional preoccupation with the tensions between states and markets (e.g. regulatory powers and a momentum towards liberalisation) has a particular resonance when one views the pressures that public health and health care systems currently face from factors such as health service liberalisation, cost pressures and internationally mobile health care resources. Likewise, the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank, WTO, IMF) have considerable and growing structural power over the conditions in which states and markets interact to provide health care and act to circumscribe the limits of national authority over diverse spheres such as health regulations, patent rights, pharmaceuticals, and even the levels of health expenditures. The background to these structural pressures is witnessing a widespread reintroduction of the market into international and national health systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]