ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights key features in the historical development of health care in Britain to show how these continue to impact on the construction of contemporary health provision for welfare subjects. It explains how changing constructs of 'ill health' and 'health' constitute the welfare subject, the health policies of the Conservatives and New Labour using the concept of a dominant discourse of welfare within which the supplementary discourses of 'work', 'consumption', 'family' and 'sexuality' are critical to the formation of the subject in postmodern times. The chapter argues that constructs of 'ill health' and 'health' arise as much from social and moral imperatives as from biological states. It states that the constructed culpability of the welfare subject for their state of wellbeing emerges whenever the health-care issues of marginalised individuals or groups arise. The chapter explores health policies and deals with the related issue of community care for elders and disabled people, and the broader issues of public health policy.
