The boundaries of what constitutes “sufficient” health have always been open and,
as such, health care has proven to be an opportune area for profit growth. In
the United States, the allure of health as a market commodity has proven very
strong, but even here it cannot be a mere spontaneous product of the market. It
requires government to foster and develop public policy that effectively
promotes and maintains health care delivery across the population. Historically,
U.S. public policy has veered away from anything akin to universal care, and it
has typically been understood as an outlier among advanced industrial states.
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soon to engulf a full fifth of its GDP. In this paper, I argue that the
complicated dynamic between a growing market in health delivery and a patchwork
of political reforms has encouraged “adaptive accumulation,” a process whereby
capital secures optimized accumulation outcomes from enhanced government
intervention, deriving extra-market benefits along the way. To make this
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