Fighting for Life: Health Care and Democracy in Capitalist Poland

This paper discusses the social and political processes health care transformation in postcommunist Europe has involved in practice. It begins by suggesting a theoretical framework for the study of postcommunist welfare. Focussing on Poland, it examines what lies behind the frictions which have become an integral feature of health care change, which most recently has centred on the privatisation of hospitals. An empirically detailed interpretive analysis of the Polish nurses’ protests is put forward, drawing on interviews, protest bulletins, and official and media reports. The paper concludes that the liberalisation and privatisation currently in train can be seen as a contested ‘revolution from above’ in and through health care, and that the democratic potential offered by the protests has been subverted insofar as health care policy-making has itself become privatised.