Les droits sociaux sous tension : santé et néolibéralisme dans le Chili démocratique

The redesign of the Chilean health system since 1979 is paradigmatic in relation to the reforms of liberalization and the readjustment of the relations between State, market and civil society under a neoliberal regime. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relation between the social protection and the current health system in Chile, questioning the role of the social rights in the administration of the social security. This is a reflexion about the concept of State that appears after the economic and political reforms implemented during the dictatorship and consolidated under the subsequent democratic regimes. To address this issue, we analyse the processes of health system reform and the current debate on the right to health. From a socio-political and normative point of view, the paper illustrates the main tensions within this debate at both institutional and ordinary level, highlighting a moral economy that justifies certain forms of inequality and a difficulty of speaking the language of social rights.