The contributors to this volume review the rapidly changing context of debates about financing health care and its relationship to globalization and privatization and examine the mechanisms and institutional processes involved.

Health service delivery is being restructured in many different ways in both the industrialized and developing countries. This process is set to accelerate as a result of diverse factors including fiscal pressure, privatization and the renegotiation of the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), with important implications for access and equity in the healthcare field. The contributors to this volume review the rapidly changing context of debates about financing health care and its relationship to globalization and privatization and examine the mechanisms and institutional processes involved. They explore four very different country experiences: the USA, where the creed of market competition and managed care in the health sector is most advanced; Western Europe, where reforms aimed at market competition and freedom of choice are taking place; developing countries, where the role of the state in healthcare delivery is being dramatically reduced; and Cuba, which shows what political commitment to public health can still achieve despite scarce resources.

PART 1: CONCEPTUAL AND LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK
1. Restructuring Health Services and the Politics of Privatisation - Kasturi Sen
2. Trading Health Care Away: GATS, Public Services and Privatisation - Sarah Sexton
3. Ethics and Medical Care in a Globalising World: Some Reflections - Imrana Qadeer
PART 2: THE PROCESS OF CHANGE
4. Assessing Health System Performance - a Critical Appraisal of the WHO World Health Report 2000 and Future Developments -
Claudia Travassos
5. Privatisation, Globalisation and Health Workers - David Hall
6. Health Systems Solidarity and Other European Community Policies - Meri Koivusalo
PART 3: CASE STUDIES OF RESTRUCTURING: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
7. Does Solidarity Survive? A Comparative Analysis of Social Health Insurance Reform in Four European Countries - Hans Maarse
8. Restructuring Health Services in Italy: the Paradox of Devolution - Francesco Taroni
9. Global Capital and Health Care Reform: The Experience of the UK - Jean Shaoul
10. Trouble for Conservative Health Care Counter Reforms in Spain - M. Sanchez Bayle and H. Beiras Cal
11. The Sad Experience of Corporate Health Care in the USA - Steffie Woolhandler
12. Reform of the Cuban Health Sector in the Past Forty Years - Felix. J. Sanso Soberats
13. The Political Economy of Health Care Reform in Malaysia - Chan Chee Khoon
14. Implementing Universal Coverage for Health Care in Thailand - Sanguan Nitayarumphong and Supasit Pannarunothai
15. The Role of the State in the Privatisation and Corporatisation of Medical Care in Andhra Pradesh,
India - K.V. Narayana
16.
Concluding Remarks