Economics of Need: The Experience of the British Health Service

Michael Cooper
Additional contact information
Michael Cooper: University of Exeter

Chapter 6 in The Economics of Health and Medical Care, 1974, pp 89-107 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Twenty-five years of employing ‘need’ as the main allocative device within the Health Service has demonstrated that ‘need’ is capable of almost infinite interpretation. In a zero-price market no level of provision exists to eliminate excess demand and remove the necessity for rationing. This rationing function has never been explicitly recognized, but has fallen by default upon the medical profession as the main decisionmakers of the Service. Doctors, however, have claimed the complete clinical freedom to act solely in the interests of each individual patient while being accountable only to their own personal consciences. As a consequence, rationing has taken place only implicity, resulting in inconsistencies of medical practice and in inequalities of provision. Further, need being limitless, the Service has found it easier to claim shortages of resources than to examine critically their current deployment. A better understanding of the process by which the need for medical care is determined and a re-examination of the rationality of clinical freedom is attempted.

Keywords: Health Care Resource; None None; Effective Demand; Actual Provision; British Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1974
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-63660-0_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349636600

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-63660-0_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Economic Association Series from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().