The regulatory path to healthcare systems’ financialization

Cyril Benoît (cyril.benoit1@sciencespo.fr)
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Cyril Benoît: CEE - Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: The literature has often presented European healthcare systems as being less exposed to the growing dependencies on global finance observed in other areas of social policy. This article explores the sources and dynamics of a regulatory path to healthcare systems' financialization that challenges this depiction. Building on analogies with the case of pension policy, we show that the integration of the private health insurance sector into the European Union financial regulation framework has resulted in perceptible processes of financialization. Notably this manifested in the growing role of financial firms, in non-profit health insurers' adoption of ‘financialized' business practices and eventually in a noticeable change of these actors' positioning in domestic healthcare reform. After having discussed the theoretical implications, the article provides an empirical illustration of this argument by documenting the implementation of the Solvency II insurance directive by health insurers in France, and describes its more general consequences and implications beyond this case study.

Keywords: healthcare; European Union; financial regulation; insurance; financialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Published in Journal of European Social Policy, 2023, 33 (4), pp.407-420. ⟨10.1177/09589287231176776⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04220439

DOI: 10.1177/09589287231176776

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