Health policy in the UK

Alec Fraser and Nicholas Mays

Chapter 27 in Research Handbook on Health Care Policy, 2024, pp 497-552 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter analyses the main political, institutional, economic, and organisational factors that contribute to an understanding of UK health policy development, drawing on illustrative examples. The chapter explores the strengths of UK health policymaking as well as its structural weaknesses - the latter, in particular, in relation to social care (the British term for long term care) which remains particularly problematic. The chapter emphasises the enduring emotional attachment that the British people have had to the National Health Service (NHS) since its inception in 1948. Notwithstanding this overall popular support for the NHS and what it symbolises, the NHS, at least as much if not more than wider health policy, is, and has been, politically contested and subject to regular reform. This is attributed to the fact that the executive is extremely powerful in the UK making it relatively easy for governments to reorganise NHS structures and bodies.

Keywords: Business and Management; Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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