ABSTRACT
Marxists argue that medical care in societies like Britain must be seen as part of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of the pluralist democratic theory of power is that the resources which contribute to power are widely distributed among different groups. Alford argues that structural interests are those interests which gain or lose from the form of organisation of health services. There are three sets of structural interests: dominant, challenging and repressed. There are many different concepts of health. Margaret Stacey has identified three dimensions along which these concepts vary: individual or collective; functional fitness or welfare; preventive or curative. In the pluralist framework, concepts of health and the role of medicine are not seen as having special significance. The medical profession is viewed as one interest among many, albeit in most studies a key interest; and concepts of health are implicitly assumed to have emerged out of the underlying consensus on which pluralist theories are based.
