But even the intriguing Thirteen – a wild, secretive, bisexual, terminally ill care-giver – fell at first within the parameters of the stereotype the industry had given her.
But if you are very ill, caring for relatives, or for whatever reason cannot keep working up to state pension age (now 65 for men and between 63 and 64 for women) you get nothing at all.
Other models, more centered on the needs of the patients than on the consumption of technical procedures, are also operating and disputing the conceptualization of the health-ill-care model.
In order to accomplish these goals, the industry has been successfully lobbying for regulatory changes and in developing strategies to change the common sense related to the conceptualization of health-ill-care.
Cost containment, individual responsibility, cost-effectiveness, case management of patients, coordination of care, etc. are technical concepts that penetrated the sector and deeply transformed the conceptualization of health-ill-care.
This model operated in contraposition to the interests of the medical industrial complex, which since the middle of the 1990s had developed silent reforms to regain authority in defining the health-ill-care model.
In the health sector the massive entrance of financial capital changed not only the modus operandi at the economic level but also the common sense regarding the ideas about health-ill-care.
Moreover, the messages about health-ill-care are presented as social/moral mandates, meaning that if individuals are not proactively controlling their health, the results of their behaviors are at a great cost to society.
We observed that as a consequence of the massive adoption of managed care in the U.S. and other countries, the pharmaceutical arm of the medical industrial complex has developed health reforms, most of them without public debate, to regain market share and authority in defining the health-ill-care model [ 8].
The study analyzed the ideological mechanisms and the practices developed by financial groups and other central actors in the health sector to change common sense about the conceptualization of health-ill-care, including the idea that patients/users should be transformed into consumers/clients [ 4].
In previous sections we analyzed the strategies utilized by the pharmaceutical industry to regain market positions and leadership in defining the health-ill-care process in the U.S. From the U.S., multinational companies export, through their subsidiaries in other countries, to the rest of the world their new business models and strategies to regain market power.
