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"In the post-Cold War, post financial crisis era, health care is an issue of critical political, personal and economic concern. In the US, plans to address a troubled health care model were met by vocal opposition. In the UK and post-communist Europe, attempts to introduce aspects of that model have resulted in controversy and violent protests, while China and Russia have recently backpedalled on marketising reforms. This innovative book provides a timely analysis addressing the many dimensions of radical health care change. Bringing together three major geopolitical regions with strikingly different recent histories, this international cast of contributors, examines reform in US, China and Europe within a single study frame. They look at the processes that have been involved when countries with such diverse starting points try to move towards a globally shared health care framework. An underlying theme running through the chapters is access to care, and how it is shaped by moral economies, by what can be said and known, and by political and economic power. Health Care Reform and Globalisation confronts the interpretations and experiences of patients, professionals, and politicians of health care transformation in practice. It will be of interest to scholars from a range of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including public health, anthropology, area studies, sociology, politics, social policy, geography and economics"--Provided by publisher

This paper discusses the social and political processes health care transformation in postcommunist Europe has involved in practice. It begins by suggesting a theoretical framework for the study of postcommunist welfare. Focusing on Poland, it examines what lies behind the frictions which have become an integral feature of health care change, which most recently has centred on the privatization of hospitals. An empirically detailed interpretive analysis of the Polish nurses' protests is put forward, drawing on interviews, protest bulletins, and official and media reports. The paper concludes that the liberalization and privatization currently in train can be seen as a contested 'revolution from above' in and through health care, and that the democratic potential offered by the protests has been subverted insofar as health care policy-making has itself become privatized.

This article discusses health care change with respect to the transformation of the social order within Poland and transnationally. It considers the implications for health care equality and the understanding of citizenship, of a process of health care reform which constitutes part of a transition involving the formation of new power asymmetries based on poverty and wealth. Drawing on qualitative research carried out in Nowa Huta, the article shows how health care change has contributed to poverty and how the introduction of liberal democracy has been accompanied by the perception of a loss of health rights.The article questions the language of citizenship which underpins the aspiration for health equality in the EU, and indicates the implications of the occlusion of the politico-economic effects of capitalism in citizenship discourse.

This article considers the implications of generalizing existing EU equal opportunities legislation to countries that are in a transition from state socialism. The transposition of Western policy assumes that gender identities & interests in the East & the West are the same. The East-West tensions that persist over the ideas of gender & feminism suggest that such an assumption may be out of place. I discuss explicit sexual equality policies under communism, showing how, despite the limits to their success, sexual difference was nevertheless not experienced as the source of political inequality during the communist regime. Sexual equalization was rather the unintended consequence of state socialism, where political exclusion was defined in terms of society vis-a-vis the state. While existing EU policy has been oriented toward the exclusionary meaning that the public-private distinction has had in the West, in the communist countries, political inequality was not defined in these terms. For eastern European countries, convergence with the West means not only the rise of masculinism, but also the rise of unemployment, for both women & men, & the rise of class. One reason why sexual discrimination in the labor market may not have priority among eastern European women's concerns is that a starker comparison is between the unemployment of both sexes now, as compared with the full employment of both sexes in the past. 3 Figures, 63 References. Adapted from the source document.

The present paper argues that the transformation of the relationship between public and private spheres lies at the heart of the process of change in Eastern Europe, and that the exclusion of women and the de-grading of feminine identity currently in train are not contingent to, but rather a fundamentally constitutive feature of, the democratisation of Eastern Europe. This contrasts with existing accounts of social transition which have focused exclusively on the reconstruction of the public sphere. The paper characterises the changing nature of patriarchy in Eastern Europe, and explains why such changes have as yet not met with serious feminist challenge. It does so by highlighting the way in which the formal structures of state socialism acted to foster neo-traditionalism and traditional gender identity, and by showing how traditional gender identity has acted as a vital vehicle for change. Drawing on historical comparisons, it is argued that Eastern Europe's silent revolution may in fact be seen as a dramatic illustration of the masculinism at the heart of Western democracy.