Cancer Intersections : Biomedicine, Health Insurance, and the Paradoxes of Health Care Reform in Neoliberal Colombia

Abstract

Cancer Intersections is an ethnographic analysis of the complex and paradoxical efforts to access neoliberal, market-based oncological treatments in Colombia, a country where all patients are legally guaranteed access to medical services, including high-cost ones. Drawing on years of fieldwork in Cali, Camilo Sanz explores the deep entanglements between medical, legal, and policy practices that share a common goal of treating and curing cancer but are hindered by bureaucratic procedures, pernicious financial interests, and class politics. The interplay of these hurdles dictates the rhythm at which patients access treatment and, even in resource-rich settings, suffer due to market imperatives that shape how treatments unfold. Through careful and measured observation, Sanz shows how a neoliberal universal health care regime delays access to care for those reliant on public assistance, which means that some patients will start treatment only after it is unlikely to change the course of the disease. “Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why systems meant to save our lives end up killing us instead.” — SCOTT STONINGTON, author of The Spirit Ambulance: Choreographing the End of Life in Thailand “A richly detailed and theoretically innovative ethnography that illuminates how neoliberal health care systems can undermine a legally guaranteed right to health care.” — AMY COOPER, author of State of Health: Pleasure and Politics in Venezuelan Health Care under Chávez “This book has much to offer to anthropologists, clinicians, bioethicists, philosophers, and policymakers who want to understand how inequities are remade and reframed by market-based health care reforms.” — CÉSAR E. ABADÍA-BARRERO, author of Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital