Economic Determinism: A Model of the Political Economy of Medical Care

Abstract

Existing economic models of the medical care sector are characterized by unrealistic assumptions concerning (a) the relationship between medical care and health, (b) the economic behavior of both consumers and providers of health care, and (c) the nature of politics in the American culture. The model of the economy of medical care proposed here attempts to correct for these logical and empirical inconsistencies. The central argument is that the medical care system promotes not the health of the people, but instead, economic, political, and cultural inequality for a health profession's and economic elite. When stresses within the medical system threaten the institutional conditions that sustain this inequality, they are reestablished through state-sanctioned collective action.

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