ABSTRACT
According to a leading authority, Daniel Fox, Health policy, like policy for retirement income, job security and unemployment, social services and housing, has been profoundly influenced by the politics of economic productivity, social justice, and demographic change in each country. The history of health policy tends to be studied either within the broader context of social and welfare policy or as one possible focus for study of the relationship between scientific research and government priorities. However, health policy has also been guided by perceptions of the nature and course of disease and opinions about the probability that particular medical interventions, organized and distributed in particular ways, would ameliorate its effects. It concludes that improvement in access to health and medical services, divorce of health care provision from means-tested charity, and the coincidental introduction of effective new therapies transformed working-class health culture and behavior in the years immediately following the Second World War.
