Primary Healthcare

In this chapter, we analyse how former healthcare monopolies run by counties were abolished so that all healthcare centres that meet basic medical requirements are allowed to compete for patients, who are free to choose their provider. We use theories from the field of marketing for analysing this reorganization and demonstrate that it can be seen as the creation of a new consumer market or a reorganization of the counties; it is equally accurate to describe the result as an organized market or a marketized organization. We argue that terms such as ‘quasi-markets’ and ‘quasi-organization’ are misleading, as they are based on the assumption that markets and organizations are pure and distinct opposites. Rather, we argue that almost all markets are more or less organized and that many organizations are more or less marketized.