Privatizing and prescribing identity: How Canadian biotechnology firms capture queer, trans, and neurodivergent movements for profit

The pivot to telehealth through the COVID-19 pandemic spawned numerous private investor-owned virtual care firms, capitalizing on loopholes and outdated policies in Canada's healthcare regulatory framework. Amidst neoliberal biocapitalism, these health technology firms are increasingly functioning as primary care providers to fill the growing gaps in care under austerity. Contemporary health companies co-opt identity politics and social movement rhetoric in their marketing, transforming marginalized communities into profitable niche markets. One such company is PurposeMed, a venture-capital backed start-up that operates private virtual clinics for HIV PrEP medication (Freddie), gender-affirming care (Foria), ADHD assessment and prescribing (Frida), and a pharmacy (Affirming Care). We analyze PurposeMed as a case study to illustrate broader trends in the creeping privatization of health. We reveal the results of a power structure and social network analysis of PurposeMed to understand the corporate powers transforming Canadian health care. Next, we present a critical discourse analysis of PurposeMed's marketing and branding strategies, highlighting their exploitation of the existing digital networks and health information-seeking patterns of queer, trans, and neurodivergent communities to accumulate capital. Combined, our results demonstrate that healthcare privatization and commercialization in Canada is not an accident; rather, PurposeMed is the inevitable result of deliberate policy choices and austerity politics. We conclude by calling for urgent scholarly attention to the communities targeted by creeping privatization of Canadian health care and the firms profiting from them.