Abstract

75 years ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) entered into force as the first technical agency of the United Nations. In this way, the right to health became the first to be institutionalized as binding international law. After the sequence of tragedies in the first half of the XX century, the target of cooperating to achieve the highest standard of health for all – later operationalized in Alma Ata in 1978 with the Health for All agenda – was deemed the strategy of choice to rebuild Europe and bring dignity and security to humankind. Parallel to the WHO enforcement in 1948, the Beveridge system of universal public healthcare was established in the UK and the Italian Constitution firmly asserted the right to health as dissociated from citizenship status. The conservative neoliberal revolution ushering globalization as we know it today has completely turned the political intuition of universalism and public responsibility in health upside down. A pandemic of marketdriven privatization and then financialization of healthcare has transfigured health policies globally, a tragedy that has emerged in all its ferocity after the 2008 financial crisis, not only in Greece. Not even the avoidable catastrophe of COVID-19 has generated a retreat from doubling down on neoliberal policies. Indeed, in today’s semantic paradox the notion of universalism in the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) agenda serves the purpose of promoting privatization and the insurance model in healthcare.