How the United States exports managed care to developing countries

As their expansion slows in the United States, managed care organizations w ill continue to enter new markets abroad. Investors view the opening of man aged care in Latin America as a lucrative business opportunity. As public-s ector services and social security funds are cut back, privatized, and reor ganized under managed care, with the support of international lending agenc ies such as the World Bank, the effects of these reforms on access to preve ntive and curative services will hold great importance throughout the devel oping world. Many groups in Latin America are working on alternative projec ts that defend health as a public good, and similar movements have begun in Africa and Asia. Increasingly, this organizing is being recognized not onl y as part of a class struggle but also as part of a struggle against econom ic imperialism-which has now taken on the new appearance of rescuing less d eveloped countries from rising health care costs and inefficient bureaucrac ies through the imposition of neoliberal managed-care solutions exported fr om the United States.