ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses the relationship between health care and welfare states. It focuses the theoretical and empirical contributions to the ongoing scholarly debate. The chapter critically examines different types of welfare regimes and the key strands of literature about the debate over the convergence or divergence of health care and highlights the main arguments of this debate. It highlights the importance of situating health care within the broader context of welfare state to analyse the trajectory of health care financing reform and understand policy continuity and change in a better way. The chapter explains the characteristics and criticism of different types of welfare states. It is very ambitious for Hurst to examine seven health care systems in his study. Different approaches are adopted to examine the issue and there is observed diversity of research findings, which argues for the convergence, divergence or convergence-divergence mix of health care systems.
