Neoliberalism In The Healthcare System

I was reading the newspaper the other morning when I came across your article, titled “Health and Wealth”. I couldn’t help but feel urged to contact you as I found your article failed to mention the many other links between social economic status and health care. Though the general ideology that those in the highest income quintiles tend to live longer as they have access to better health care services may be accurate, it is also extremely vague and doesn’t touch on the several other ties between these issues. I first wanted to touch on what I feel is a huge contributor to the flaws in our health care system, this being the concept of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, meaning new and free from government intervention, has three principles; individualism, privatization and decentralization (McGregor, 2001). Neoliberal policies replace …show more content…
Despite what might have been the overall target of decentralization, we actually find that it has lead to less accessible health care centres which often cannot provide the same level of care as they did while the central government was involved (McGregor, 2001). Decentralization reduces how much is spent by the government for things such as health, education, income assistance and welfare systems. It views government spending on these social policies as a drain in the economy rather than an overall investment. The effects of neoliberalism have been devastating. In the film Life Under Mike (Guerrila Films Inc., 2000) we are told that children make up half of the food bank users and a third of hostile users. The film also shares that Mike Harris, Ontario’s Premier up until 2002, cut social assistance to the poor by 20% and cut taxes to the rich by 30%. This might appear to be great should you already be wealthy, been brought up in a higher income family, were provided with sufficient education, not disabled, and so on. However, those who do not have these privileges have experienced great devastation both socially and