The fate of the Greek National Health System (esy) of 1983 is analyzed by placing its development within a dynamic account of the interaction between national policy processes, international pressures from above and mobilizations from below. While Greece, despite limited economic development, laid the foundations for a health system by the end of the interwar period, rightist Greek governments, propped up by the usa, failed to build on this in favorable economic circumstances after World War II. The Greek Socialist Party (pasok) sought late in the day in 1983 to construct the esy in difficult international political-economic circumstances. It experienced considerable resistance from domestic vested interests, and made political errors, which magnified inefficiencies and inequities, and more recently lost another opportunity to reform the system in the mid-1990s.
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