“Managing” the poor: Neoliberalism, medicaid HMOs and the triumph of consumerism among the poor

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Abstract
In order to explore the contradictions of neoliberal health policy, this article examines Medicaid managed care in Philadelphia. At the federal and state levels, government is increasingly promoting private‐sector market‐based strategies over policies formerly associated with the welfare state, arguing that the former are the most effective means of achieving economic growth and guaranteeing social welfare. A prime example of this shift, Medicaid managed care is a policy by which states contract with private‐sector health maintenance organizations to provide health coverage to the poor. Drawing on ethnographic and historical data, this paper shows how Pennsylvania's Medicaid managed care program has created access barriers for poor Philadelphians. It also illustrates how ideologies that justify this policy shift serve to mask its detrimental effects on the poor. By contrasting the state's consumerist model with one group's protest efforts, this article calls into question the neoliberal ideology that undergirds health and welfare “reform.”