La extensión del seguro de salud en Iberoamérica: una estrategia de política exterior del franquismo en la inmediata posguerra (1942-1959)

For reasons of political strategy, the Franco dictatorship sought to have an influence in matters of social insurance, especially sickness coverage, in Latin American countries during the 1940s and 1950s. The results of this collaboration were mediocre in practice and led to little real progress, apart from imitating management institutions and some actuarial and statistical training courses. This failure was due to a large extent to the backwardness and weakness of the Franco dictatorship’s own model of health care provision, stifled by a chronic financial deficit and with serious shortcomings in both coverage of the population and provisions offered. Beginning in the 1960s, once the stage of isolation and autarky was overcome, the Francoist authorities reduced their interest in the Latin American strategy and started to look towards Europe.