Principles and Practice: the Case of Private Health Insurance

Abstract

Much of the debate on ’consumption sector cleavages’ has focused on housing tenure (Savage et al., this volume; Warde, this volume), although, as Hamnett (1989) points out, many of the claims made in relation to housing are thought to be indicative of wider shifts in other areas of provision. This chapter aims to extend this analysis into the field of health care. More specifically, the objective is, drawing on evidence from a study examining decisions to subscribe to private health insurance, to empirically examine the explanatory power of Saunders’ sociology of consumption. If social divisions can be made on the basis of public/private divisions in consumption patterns then, at the least, it might be expected that subscribers to private health insurance would be distinctly different in terms of social, political and cultural values than non-subscribers. More specifically, it might be expected that subscribers would be antagonistic towards collective provision of health care and the values that are tied to it.