Abstract

Despite the rhetoric of rolling back the state in Dutch healthcare in favour of the market, it has become clear that the state in recent decades has started to play a different, more controlling role in healthcare. This article analyses the debate on the role of market in Dutch healthcare on the basis of discussions about the so-called ‘personal assistance budget’ (pgb). This scheme was introduced in 1996 and has given elderly, chronically ill and disabled citizens a budget with which they could purchase care of their choice. Although this initiative was initiated as a contribution to the freedom of choice of citizens, the public attention has shifted to cases of fraud and the supposed unmanageability of this scheme. This article considers the historical relationship between the market in healthcare and the emancipation of people with disabilities. It shows how these two historical phenomena in the 1990s, when the personal assistance budget was introduced, became entangled for a short time. However, during the 2000s the tension between the market and emancipation increased due to the state that, influenced by neo-liberalism and communitarism, has tended to strictly control the use of public money for care.

How to Cite:

van Trigt, P., (2019) “De invoering van het Persoonsgebonden Budget in de gezondheidszorg in 1996 en het ontstaan van ‘vrijemarktbureaucratie’”, Sociologie 15(3), 271–287. doi: https://doi.org/10.5117/soc2019.3.003.trig