BACKGROUND: Few accounts of healthcare corporatisation examine the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. New Politics of the Welfare State (NPWS) theories recognise the relevance of crises but give more attention to programmatic than systemic (structural) retrenchment, and little to healthcare corporatisation.
OBJECTIVE: To examine what changes the 2008 financial crisis produced in the pattern of healthcare corporatisation, and the implications for NPWS theories.
METHODS: Using administrative data from the English NHS during 1995-2019 we formulated a multi-dimensional index of corporatisation, tested its validity, and used it to analyse longitudinally how the financial crisis affected the balance between the responsibilization of management and re-commodification (introduction of market-like practices) in provider corporatisation.
RESULTS: The financial crisis influenced NHS corporatisation through the fiscal austerity with which governments responded. The re-commodification of NHS providers stalled but not the responsibilization of NHS managers.
CONCLUSIONS: The corporatisation of NHS providers faltered after the financial crisis. These findings corroborate parts of NPWS theory but also reveal scope for further elaborating its accounts of systemic retrenchment in health systems.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of two reports by the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, one for Spain and one for the UK. In both countries, austerity policies were introduced following the banking crisis of 2008. The UN Rapporteur reports highlight the damage that was done by welfare retrenchment. In particular, the reports document the impact of austerity on the most vulnerable individuals and communities. The paper uses Somers\' (2008) conceptual model of citizenship as the basis for a comparative analysis of two reports. Somers\' (2008) model of citizenship is a triadic one which sees the state, market and civil society as competing elements. Each one can serve to regulate and limit the influence or excesses of the other two. Somers argues that neoliberalism has seen the dominance of the market at the expense of the role of the state and the institutions of civil society. Austerity policies saw the market dominating. Having examined the context of the two reports and their conclusions, the paper discussed the implications for individual social workers\' practice and the role of social work as a profession in tackling poverty and marginalisation.

This article examines how neoliberalism works through the Age Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCCs) program through reflections on the Toronto case. While AFCCs appear to expand the social contract between senior citizens and the state, research illustrates discrepancies between program aims and implementation, relating gaps to cost cutting associated with neoliberal austerity. Drawing on Brown\'s (2015) work, I posit instead that neoliberalism does not just affect the implementation of AFCCs through economic policies of austerity but operates as a governing rationality that can economize the very design of the program. Specifically, I examine how the neoliberal techniques of benchmarking, governance, devolution and responsibilization operate through the AFCC program in Toronto. This analysis offers insight into the problems that plague AFCCs in Toronto and more broadly, including how neoliberalism works to more fundamentally change the social contract. At the same time, this analysis highlights tensions, forms of discontent and even dissent with neoliberalism that can create openings for alternative governing rationalities that expand the social contract to take root.

Parallels have been drawn between the \'Great Depression\' of the 1930s and the more recent \'Great Recession\' that followed the 2007/8 financial crisis. Austerity was the common policy response by UK governments in both time periods. This article examines health inequalities at a local level in the 1930s, through a historical case study.
Local and national historical archives, Medical Officer for Health reports, and secondary sources were examined from 1930 to 1939 to obtain data on inequalities in health (infant mortality rates, stillbirths and neonatal mortality rates, 1935 and crude overall mortality rates, 1936) and ward-level deprivation (over-crowding rates, 1935) in Stockton-on-Tees, North-East England.
There were high geographical inequalities in overcrowding and health in Stockton-on-Tees in the 1930s. Rates of overall mortality, in particular, were higher in those wards with higher levels of overcrowding.
There were geographical inequalities in health in the 1930s and the most deprived areas had the worst overall mortality rates. The areas with the worst housing conditions and health outcomes in the 1930s remain so today - health inequality is extant over time across different periods of austerity.

Since Margaret Thatcher reached power in the United Kingdom, European governments have increasingly turned to neoliberal forms of policy-making, focusing, especially after the 2008 Great Recession on \'austerity policies\' rather than investing in social protection policies. We applied a multiple explanatory case studies methodology to examine how and why challenges and resistance to these austerity measures are successful or not in four settings for three different social policy issues: using a gender lens in state budgeting in Andalusia (Spain), maintaining unemployment benefits in Italy and cuts to fuel poverty reduction programs in Northern Ireland and England. In particular, we intended to learn about whether resistance strategies are shared across disparate cases or whether there are unique activities that lead to successful resistance to austerity policies. As our approach drew from realist philosophy of science, we started with initial theories concerning collective action, political ideology and political power of affected populations. Our findings suggest that there are similarities between the cases we studied despite differences in political and policy contexts. We found that joint action between advocacy groups was effective in resisting cuts to social spending. Evidence also indicates that the social construction of target populations is important in resisting changes to social programmes. This was observed in both England and Northern Ireland where pensioners held significant political clout.

Despite the sizeable cuts in public healthcare spending, which were part of the austerity measures recently undertaken in Southern European countries, little attention has been devoted to monitoring its distributional consequences in terms of healthcare use. This study aims at measuring socioeconomic inequities in primary and secondary healthcare use experienced some time after the crisis onset in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The analysis, based on data drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), focuses on older people, who generally face significantly higher healthcare needs, and whose health appeared to have worsened in the aftermath of the crisis. The Horizontal Inequity indexes reveal remarkable socioeconomic inequities in older people\'s access to secondary healthcare in all three countries. In Portugal, the one country facing most severe healthcare budget cuts and where user charges apply also to GP visits, even access to primary care exhibits a significant pro-rich concentration. If reducing inequities in older people\'s access to healthcare remains a policy objective, austerity measures maybe pulling the Olive belt countries further away from achieving it.

The programme for fiscal consolidation in Greece has led to income decrease and several changes in health policy. In this context, this study aims to assess how economic crisis affected unmet healthcare needs in Greece.
Time series analysis was performed for the years 2004 through 2011 using the EU-SILC database. The dependent variable was the percentage of people who had medical needs but did not use healthcare services. Median income, unemployment and time period were used as independent variables. We also compared self-reported unmet healthcare needs drawn from a national survey conducted in pre-crisis 2006 with a similar survey from 2011 (after the onset of the crisis). A common questionnaire was used in both years to assess unmet healthcare needs, including year of survey, gender, age, health status, chronic disease, educational level, income, employment, health insurance status, and prefecture. The outcome of interest was unmet healthcare needs due to financial reasons. Ordinary least squares, as well as logistic regression analysis were conducted to analyze the results.
Unmet healthcare needs increased after the enactment of austerity measures, while the year of participation in the survey was significantly associated with unmet healthcare needs. Income, educational level, employment status, and having insurance, private or public, were also significant determinants of unmet healthcare needs due to financial reasons.
The adverse economic environment has significantly affected unmet health needs. Therefore health policy actions and social policy measures are essential in order to mitigate the negative impact on access to healthcare services and health status.

BACKGROUND: During the last few years, many countries in Europe suffered from a severe economic crisis which resulted in high unemployment rates. In this frame, the possible relationship between unemployment rate and suicidal rates at the level of the general population has been debated recently.
METHODS: The official data concerning completed suicides and unemployment rates from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office for the years 2000-2011 were used. The percentage of changes from the previous year in the unemployment rate and the suicidal rates concerning both the general and the unemployed populations was calculated. Pearson correlation coefficient between the change in suicidal rates and change in unemployment rates was calculated both for the same year as well as after 1-6 years.
RESULTS: The correlations between the unemployment rate and suicide rates were strongly negative both for the general and for the unemployed populations (-0.65 and -0.55, respectively). The correlation of unemployment change with suicidality change after 1-6 years gave a peak strong positive correlation at 5 years for the general population (0.78). At 4 years after the index year, there is a peak correlation with a moderate value for the unemployed population (0.47) and a similar moderate value for the general population (0.46).
CONCLUSIONS: The current findings from Hungary suggest that unemployment might be associated with suicidality in the general population only after 3-5 years. It is possible that the distressing environment of the economic crisis increases suicidality in the general population rather than specifically in unemployed people.