Who is Excluded from ‘Universal’ Health Care? Rurality, the Marginalization of Health Services, and Moving Beyond Social Capital

Abstract

Universal health care, like universal education, is woven into the concord of modern citizenship. Yet how is this universality benchmarked, defined, configured, and framed? This theoretical article probes the health services in rural, regional, and remote areas, and explores the standards that are both expected and offered. This is a paper of advocacy and interpretation, demonstrating how the absence of regional planning and development is part of a wider neglect of universal health care in an under-regulated, under-funded ‘national’ system. Further, this research offers a retheorization of (post)social capital, opening regional, rural and remote health to new conceptualizations of resilience and wellbeing.

Keywords

• universal health care
• regional health
• regional inequality
• social capital
• resilience
• wellbeing