The issue of rationing will be discussed at boost length later. Conflict theory will provide a sociological perspective from which to view such a dispersal of finite medical resources. Structural functionalism, as another sociological perspective, will also be discussed as it relates to the U.S. health care system. Is the lack of adequate health care a humans issue, or a private problem? The theories of C. Wright Mills, along with the sociological perspectives of conflict theory and structural functionalism will guide the discussion.
The scattering of power (or money, or influence, or finite resources, etc.) has been persistently, if sometimes sporadically, analyse by American social scientists. At the national level, peradventure the most significant of these studies was C. Wright Mills's The Power Elite, published in 1956. In addition,
The medical care system will continue to be resistant to meeting the needfully of the greatest number of people requiring care, until we decide to consider the governmental and economic institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and face of those most able to afford the cost.
Specific employment groups have benefitted from a health care system that is the most technologically advanced in the world. The ranks of nurses and doctors have been supplemented with so many raw personnel (all of whom draw a paycheck based on what the market will allow--and there is great demand) that "more than two-thirds of all personnel now employed in health care are in nontraditional allied health or support service positions" (Kronenfeld, 1993, p. 82).
Mills, C. W. (1957). The power elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
One of Mills's primary(prenominal) targets was the sociologist Talcott Parsons, who argued (from a functionalist perspective) that society institutionalizes sickness, and creates a highly evolved "medical institution," so that the sick may be expediently cared for and returned to their normal, non-deviant roles as "well," or else than "sick," individuals. Implicit in the functionalist image of the sick role is the presumption that health care services are available to all members of a society, regardless of class, race, age, gender, or creed.
Patrick, D. L., & Erickson, P. (1993). Health status and health policy: Quality of life in health care evaluation and resource allocation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reagan, M. D. (1992). Curing the crisis: Options for America's health care. bowlder: Westview Press. Vander Zanden, J. W. (1993). Sociology: The core. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
As Mills (1959) points out, even liberalism has been watered coldcock by the academicians. He writes, "Liberalism has become less a reform movement than the administration of social se
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