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Costly Efficiencies: Health Care Spending, COVID-19, and the Public/Private Health Care Debate

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  • Mouré, Christopher

Abstract

* Winner of the 2022 RECASP First Essay Prize * Proponents of private healthcare often claim that the private sector is more ‘efficient’ at delivering healthcare services. This paper tests the privatization thesis in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a large sample of countries, I investigate how healthcare privatization affects the correlation between COVID-19 death rates and healthcare spending (as a share of GDP). In countries with healthcare that is mostly public, I find no correlation. However, in countries with significant healthcare privatization, I find that greater healthcare spending was associated with more COVID-19 deaths. This result is consistent with the theory of ‘capital as power’, which argues that to earn profits, the private sector seeks to strategically limit the provision of social goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Mouré, Christopher, 2022. "Costly Efficiencies: Health Care Spending, COVID-19, and the Public/Private Health Care Debate," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 2(2), pages 17-45.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:caprev:253655
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    capital as power; COVID-19; health; profit; sabotage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

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