Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Public Good, Bad Policies, And Tough Times: When Profit And Public Interests Collide, Austin Mcneill Brown, Shannon M. Monnat

Population Health Research Brief Series

Privatization of public goods maximizes corporate profits while providing minimal benefits or protections to public health. When calamities such as infectious disease pandemics, natural disasters, and severe weather strike, privatized systems often fail to respond adequately. This issue brief describes how privatization of public goods undermines public health, damages public trust, and erodes democracy and provides suggestions for how we can rethink policies to value people over profits instead of valuing profits over people.