ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on to raise additional policy questions such as the correlation between specific aspects of poverty and poor health. It examines the tensions that exist in a democracy such as ours among the drive to greater equity, the resistance of the public to higher taxes, and the societal necessity to pay attention to efficacy in the use of scarce resources. The book looks at the politics of health care inequalities. It argues that most democratic societies have not necessarily committed themselves to broad-based “universalism”; rather, they have been willing to tolerate a considerable degree of inequality in the provision of medical care to different classes. The book shows the “social deprivation” that they suffer as the key cause of their inferior health status and dismisses the notion that their poor health is the primary cause of that deprivation.
