Universalización neoliberal del Sistema de Salud en el México del siglo XXI. Agenda política, retos y núcleos de resistencia

Abstract

The right to health and its social construction and defense, the backbone for critical thought in health, has as its main obstacle the advance of neoliberal policies in every sphere of social life in Mexico and other Latin American countries. The most important obstacle for the right to health is the silent but powerful advance of health reforms that have turned "decen-tralization" into a road opposed to the construction of the "modern and democratic" nation, which was the horizon promised by governments before technocratic rule took over. Under “structured pluralism”, decentralization is no longer the way to build the political regime of the welfare state through the distribution of decision-making to the different states and the de-commodification of public goods. For neoliberal capitalist ideology, decentralization means the taking apart of the functions of the state itself and the neglect of its substantial responsibilities in order to cede them to the market. Its application in health has led the Ministry of Health to the re-commodification of social rights and the disappearance of other elements of the system, such as the right to social security or the right to have access to public health actions. With health care reform, which consolidates an anti-democratic polit-ical regime, citizens are transformed into mere customers whose rights are limited to the extent of their policy’s coverage. To legalize and open the possibility of re-commodifying any required medical intervention is a process whose implementation has required the ap-plication of a technique that includes, amongst other things, the systematic production of a countersense official discourse.