This article examines the political economy of healthcare financing and provision from a Marxist perspective. The article argues that the nature of a country's health financing system results in part as a result of the balance of class forces within a society. The commodification of healthcare is seen as not only creating barriers to access that are deleterious to society's most vulnerable members, but also distorting the dynamics of healthcare provision itself. The article closes with a typology of healthcare financing and provision and a brief analysis of essential elements of a rights-based approach to healthcare financing and delivery.
Much has been written both about economic and military manifestations of empire, but there are fewer examinations of how the two are interconnected. This article explores five forms of linking motivations by which economic imperialism escalates into military interventions: resource covetous, enterprise-specific, system protective, empire share, and military-industrialist linkages. The first three types describe how imperial relations between empires and client states may lead military interventions in the latter by the former to ensure control of critical resources, corporate dominance of a client state's land or industry, or to safeguard global capitalism itself. Empire share linkages are reflected when conflict among imperialist countries themselves develops into wars among core countries, while military-industrial linkages are when the interests of the arms and related industries themselves become a motivation for military interventions. These connections are not mutually exclusive, and each may be manifested to a lesser or greater degree in various imperialist interventions simultaneously.
I thank the following people without whom the production of this Master's Thesis would have been enormously more difficult if not wholly impossible. My most sincere gratitude I extend to my major professor Dr. Robert Mazur whose patience, ideas and guidance were essential to the formation and approach of this thesis. I would like to thank my committee members Dr. Cornelia Flora and Dr. Francis Owusu for their insights as well as Dr. Londa Vanderwal who provided me with countless contacts, leads, data, advice and even presented my proposal to the Scientific Coordinating Committee in The Gambia during my attempts to gather data on the BMC in The Gambia. I also wish to extend my gratitude to Abdu Cham, my former Language Cultural Helper in the Peace Corps, who not only helped to teach me Mandinka when I was a PCV, but also tried (albeit without success) to gather data for this project when the focus was going to be centered more on The Gambia rather than Ghana. I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to Jeffery Weiss, Dr. Michael Zmolek, who have endured countless hours of discussion about my thesis and provided both encouragement and insights. I also would like to thank Bill and Evilean Thomas who helped take care of my wonderful daughter while I worked on this work. I also wish to extend my gratitude to Dr. Fabienne Ouapou-Lena, Yusupha Sanneh (ñancho!), Annette Abenakyo, Godwin and Margaret Lawal, Selowie Ahedor, my sister Rebecca Wax and her family, and of course my parents Dr James and Sarah Christiansen without whom I would not have reached these heights. This work is dedicated to my daughter, Kayla Salimata Christiansen who I love so very much.
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