ABSTRACT
This chapter relates the post-war anti-communist campaign and royalist politics to the health care reform in the 1970s-1980s. It argues that, while the medical service was recruited to save the nation, the monarchy, from the previous communist threat, contemporary moral discourse was formulated within a circle of medical professionals. The opposition to Haskin Shinawatra and his alliance with global capitalism led to a military coup sanctioned by the king. Thailand's health care system has been discursive studies aimed at highlighting prominent discourses related to health issues and their effects. The chapter analyzes the repression of worldly desire sanctioned by Buddhist morality. It draws some conclusions about the significance of worldly desire in the formulation of the peasants' political subjectivity that manifested itself in the redshirt revolt in 2010. After Thailand had been drawn into the Cold War, its health care system was expanded to encompass the rural populace to develop the country as part of the US anti-communist campaign.
