Summary
Contents
Subject index
The fully revised edition of this successful textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to medical sociology and an assessment of its significance for social theory and the social sciences. It includes a completely revised chapter on mental health and new chapters on the sociology of the body and on the relationship between health and risk in contemporary societies. Bryan S Turner considers the ways in which different social theorists have interpreted the experience of health and disease, and the social relations and power structures involved in medical practice. He examines health as an aspect of social action and looks at the subject of health at three levels - the individual, the social and the societal. Among the pe
Comparative Health Systems: The Globalization of Medical Power
Comparative Health Systems: The Globalization of Medical Power
Health-Care Systems
There are a number of ways in which health-care systems can be classified. For example, Roemer (1977) draws a valuable distinction between free enterprise systems, welfare-state forms of health care, the health systems of the underdeveloped societies, the health systems of transitional societies and finally socialist systems of health care. In this chapter I shall be solely concerned with free enterprise, welfare state and socialist forms of health care with special reference to the USA, the UK and what were the Soviet bloc societies. To simplify the discussion, we can argue that health-care systems vary along a continuum from private to public provision, but in practice the majority of ...
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