The contemporary politics of health care

Abstract

This final chapter will explore recent changes in health care within the broader framework of the contemporary crisis in welfare. The health sector was one of the last to be affected by the ideological and fiscal ‘crisis of welfare’, yet health care and health work have now been profoundly reconceptualised and reshaped. What are the consequences of this transformation for patients and for health workers? Do market and consumer models provide an adequate basis on which to develop health care in the future? In the sections that follow the contemporary reconstruction of health and health work will be evaluated using several different measures of ‘success’, and the relative value of these will be explored. Finally, using the sociological insights developed in the book so far, we will consider likely futures for health and health workers. Will a comprehensive ‘health service’ survive? What will be the future position of nursing in health work? To what extent will dependent groups and ‘lay voices’ be able to influence health care provision in the future? How far will the reduction of disease and the promotion of health, rather than the treatment of disease and sickness, become the main focus of health work?