1st Edition
Issues in the Political Economy of Health Care
Originally published in 1984, this book attempted to fill a gap by providing a broad-ranging structural analysis of the health care sector and the political and economic forces which influence its shape and contents, both in the western world and developing countries. The contributors examine the relationships of capitalism to health care, in terms of its influence on the physical environment, the incidence of social diseases and the prevailing (20th Century) view of what constitutes health itself; and in terms of the consequences of the new medical industrial complex it has created, such as the declining provision of health care for the poor and disadvantaged and the growing power of the pharmaceutical industry.
Part 1: The Social Production of Health and Illness 1. Capitalism, Health and Illness Joe Eyer 2. A Cultural Account of ‘health’: Control, Release, and the Social Body Robert Crawford Part 2: Capital Interests and the Role of the State 3. The crisis of the International Capitalist Order and Its Implications on the Welfare State Vincente Navarro Part 3: Selected Issues 4. Organizing Medical Care for Profit J. Warren Salmon 5. The Transnational Pharmaceutical Industry and The Health of the World’s People Thomas S. Bodenheimer 6. Physicians and their Sponsors: The New Medical Relations of Production Charles Derber Part 4: The Penetration of the Developing World By the Transnational Medical Industrial Complex 7. The Political Economy of Western Medicine in Third World Countries Debabar Banerji.
Biography
John B. McKinlay was Professor of Sociology and Research Professor of Medicine at Boston University, USA.
‘[The book] should serve as an excellent supplementary source for a variety of courses in the medical social sciences.’ Hans A. Baer, Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
