Ein Überblick über die politische Ökonomie der Gesundheit im globalen Kapitalismus. Thema ist v.a. der Kampf zwischen Profitinteressen und Bestrebungen, das Gesundheitswesen als öffentliche, für alle zugängliche Dienstleistung zu erhalten bzw. zu etablieren.

Socialist Register 2010, Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism, will be published in October 2009. Health care today is the object of struggle between commercial forces seeking to make it a field of capital accumulation, and popular forces fighting to keep it -- or make it -- a public service with equal access for all. This volume focuses on the historical, economic, social and political determinants of health under capitalism, addressing:
- The political and accumulation strategies of 'big pharma'
- The global food industry's production of hunger and obesity
- Capitalism and mental illness
- Health care as TV soap opera

The forces at work in a broad range of national health care systems are examined to explain:

- The limitations of the Obama administration's plans for ending the scandal of the US health system
- How Europe's public healthcare systems are being converted into commodified markets
- Workplace struggles for control in Canada's publicly-funded healthcare system
- Systemic gender discrimination in the health systems of Sub-Saharan Africa
- How the Gates Fund and other international agencies have undermined the WHO's aim of 'health for all'
- How domestic class configurations in a country like India have reinforced this

The volume also examines:

- Cuba's egalitarian health policies at home and abroad
- China's dramatic shift away from universal basic healthcare, and its recent recommitment to this
- How we can learn from HIV/AIDS mobilizations to build a comprehensive public health movement

The volume demonstrates that the nature of health care will be determined by the outcome of the fundamental conflict between commodification and solidarity.