Enero de 2021.
Introduction
As COVID-19 swept the globe, with over 26 million cases and 466,000 deaths in
the European region alone (as of 11 January), the capacity of healthcare systems
to deal with the pandemic has been constantly in the spotlight. Long-term and
elderly care provision has also come under scrutiny, as shocking proportions of
COVID-19 deaths have occurred in residential care homes in many European
countries – up to 60 per cent in the pandemic’s first wave.
EU member states’ health systems – both those based on employment-related
health insurance and those financed via general taxation – have been subject to
political and policy pressures that have encouraged the creeping privatisation
of healthcare. In 2017 Corporate Europe Observatory lifted the lid on the
ideological, corporate, and financial pressures – including from the EU-level
– that have created conditions conducive to a growing role for private sector
companies in this traditionally public service.
