Healthcare Centers at the intersection of assetization and socialization

The study examines, across three case studies, how opposing restructurings of Germany’s outpatient healthcare economy are advanced through health centers. First, a spatial-analytical, quantitative follow-the-money analysis of MCCs in Bavaria shows how private equity, via constructing MCC chains as parts of Global Wealth Chains, extracts value from the solidarity-based health system and turns outpatient care into a financial asset (assetization). Second, qualitative research reveals strategies and effects of discursive and spatial concealment of this value extraction (dissociations). Third, transformative research on the Poliklinik Syndikat demonstrates public-interest-oriented socialization in neighborhood health centers. The study contributes to asset geographies and to the critical urban geography of health and, overall, provides an empirical contribution to Feminist Political Economy within heterodox economic geography.