The political economy of health care : : Where the NHS came from and where it could lead / / Julian Tudor Hart.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Bristol University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2013-1995
• VerfasserIn: Tudor Hart, Julian,
• MitwirkendeR: Benn, Tony,
• Place / Publishing House: Bristol : : Policy Press, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Health and Society
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)

With a foreword by Tony Benn. Drawing on clinical experience dating from the birth of the NHS in 1948, Julian Tudor Hart, a politically active GP in a Welsh coal mining community, charts the progress of the NHS from its 19th century origins in workers' mutual aid societies, to its current forced return to the market. His starting point is a detailed analysis of how clinical decisions are made. He explores the changing social relationships in the NHS as a gift economy, how these may be affected by reducing care to commodity status, and the new directions they might take if the NHS resumed progress independently from the market. This edition of this bestselling book has been entirely rewritten with two new chapters, and includes new material on resistance to that world-wide process. The essential principle in the book is that patients need to develop as active citizens and co-producers of health gain in a humanising society and the author's aim is to promote it wherever people recognise that pursuit of profit may be a brake on rational progress.

Table of Contents

Front Matter -- Contents -- Abbreviations and acronyms -- Foreword -- Preface to the second edition -- The NHS as wealth production -- What does it produce? -- How does it produce? -- Generalists and specialists -- Ownership -- Justice and solidarity -- A space in which to learn -- Notes and references -- Index of names -- Index of subjects