Accumulation by Dispossession and Public–Private Biomedical Pluralism in Romanian Health Care

ABSTRACT

Neoliberal reforms in health care are an accumulation by dispossession. In examining this in Romania, we show that neoliberal reforms led to an uneven landscape of public and private care. We document how patients variously situated in Romanian society respond to this situation, and demonstrate the instability of their strategies—restraining from formal care, lifting-off from public care and hooking-up to private care. Public–private biomedical pluralism proves to be detrimental to vulnerable and better-off patients alike.

KEYWORDS:

• Romania
• biomedical pluralism
• dispossession
• health care
• inequalities of access
• neoliberalism

Acknowledgments

We thank all those who shared with us their experience of accessing health services in Romania during the past decades. The authors also thanks Lenore Manderson, Victoria Team, and the three anonymous reviewers for their generous insights and comments. Any errors are however ours.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Postdoctoral Research Award from Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie; a Research Career Start Grant from DCU, Ireland; a Royal Irish Academy Mobility Grant; a Research Fellowship from the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; and the European Research Council grant “Labour Politics and the EU’s New Economic Governance Regime” [grant number 725240].

Notes on contributors

Sabina Stan

Sabina Stan is a lecturer in the School of Nursing and Human Sciences, Dublin City University, Ireland. Her research has explored health care reforms in Romania and Canada and the rise of transnational health care spaces in Europe.

Valentin-Veron Toma

Valentin-Veron Toma, MD, PhD is senior researcher at the Institute of Anthropology at the Romanian Academy. His most recent publication Work and Occupation in Romanian Psychiatry, c.1838-1945 (2016) provides a comprehensive cross-cultural account of the history of work therapy in Romanian psychiatry.