 Equity objectives in Portuguese health policyAnne Jamieson, Sjaak van der Geest and João Pereira Social Science & Medicine, 1990, vol. 31, issue 1, 91-94 Abstract: The health-equity debate has generally given far more attention to empirical rather than conceptual matters. However, empirical work on equity is at its most useful when it can be related to a specific normative framework, such as that provided by public pronouncements. This paper, therefore, aims to extract the precise equity objectives of one health care system, that of Portugal. Three seemingly distinct objectives in Portuguese health policy are identified: (i) access to health promoting commodities; (ii) equal access to NHS care for equal need; and (iii) equal access to both public and private health care. The final section attempts to find common threads running through these definitions and presents suggestions for future research. Though referred specifically to Portugal, the paper should be of interest to researchers in other countries, where a great deal of health-equity investigation continues to put the cart before the horse, by identifying unequal distributions without considéring if they are simultaneously inequitable. Keywords: equity; inequality; egalitarianism; access; Portugal (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:31:y:1990:i:1:p:91-94 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.