This article redresses an imbalance in the study of the welfare state: the comparative neglect of health-care programmes as sources of evidence about the changing politics of the welfare state. It explains why health care should be central to our understanding of the welfare state; summarises the present debates about the pressures on welfare states; explains how to think about health-care governance in this connection; develops a typology of ‘health-care states'; and shows how the experience of health care reflects, and how it departs from, the wider experience of welfare states.
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