ABSTRACT
As its name implies, a social economics of health care is not simply concerned with the distribution and allocation of service provision, although these are undoubtedly of major importance. Issues of equity and justice would inform the treatment of these, however, in contrast to the distorted, and distorting, preoccupation with ‘efficiency’ characteristic of neoclassical economics. As Glen Atkinson (1995:94) points out, the enabling myth facilitating the latter is ‘based on the notion that efficiency can be objectively discovered, but equity is simply a matter of subjective tastes’. The dualism of subjective and objective supports the false dichotomy of efficiency vs. equity. Equally, it contends that objectivity is synonymous with neutrality, whereas subjectivity is hopelessly shackled with bias. Other scholars have gone to great lengths to rid our institutionalized model of ‘science’ of this fallacy, which has been so harmful to the cause of a democratically founded social inquiry (for instance, see Lynd 1939; Mills 1959; Dowd 1966:58; Haskell 1998; Tool 1998:8-10).
