Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Family Health Policy Formulation: A Problematic Definitional Process, H. Hugh Floyd Jr.

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The family has become a focus of much concern over the past two decades as a variety of family related problems have become major social issues. These social-psychological problems are considered to have negative consequences at three analytical levels: individual, family and society. Therefore, considerable discussion has been raised about the establishment of family policy. Family policy is discussed in this paper as a definitional problematic process. Several problems of a conceptual and logistical nature are cited and some guidelines for family policy construction are made.

The Public And Care By Non-Physicians: Health Policy Consideration, Bebe F. Lavin

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In an effort to resolve what some define as a crisis in health care, medical paraprofessionals have become an increasing part of the primary care scene. As the training and use of paraprofessionals expands there has been growing insistence that much of what office-based physicians do could be handled as well or better by these non-physicians. If it is health policy to encourage the use of paraprofessionals to alleviate the shortages and maldistribution of primary care doctors, acceptance of these personnel by the public is a critical issue.

A study of the public in a Midwest area suggests considerable variability …

Organizational Structure And Professional Norms In An Alternative Health Care Setting: Physicians In Health Maintenance Organizations, Judith K. Barr, Marcia K. Steinberg

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The development of new organizational forms for the delivery of health and medical care in the U.S. includes health maintenance organizations (HMOs), designed to provide a set of comprehensive basic health services to a defined population for a fixed prepaid premium. As complex organizations, HMOs have the potential for limiting the autonomy of professionals working in them. This paper describes the legal requirements and organizational mechanisms under which physicians practice in HMOs and considers the potential for conflict between the organization and professional norms.

On the basis of document and interview data from nine HMOs, it appears that mechanisms developed …

Veterans' Medical Care: The Politics Of An American Government Health Service, Judith Lasker

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The history of veterans' benefits and services in the United States is reviewed; it demonstrates their responsiveness to dominant political, economic, military and medical interests. The ideological position that social services must be "deserved" is also seen to be an important influence on the V.A. system. The consequent inaccessibility of V.A. medical care to most veterans and almost all non-veterans raises questions about the appropriateness of the V.A. system as a model for national health care.

American Health Care: Paradigm Structures And The Parameters Of Change, Allen W. Imershein

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Recent commentary on the health care scene in the U.S. has moved increasingly toward explanations of why little or no change has occurred despite many declarations of "crisis." From Alford's (1975) elitist analysis in Health Care Politics to Navarro's (1976) marxist analysis in Medicine Under Capitalism, critics in and out of the social sciences have tried to make sense of the array of current problems and the apparent lack of response to or change in them. These analyses are in striking contrast to earlier commentaries (e.g., Schwartz, 1971; Garfield, 1970; Anderson, 1972; Citizens Board, 1972) which, while highly critical of …

The Paradoxes Of Health Planning, Bonnie Morel Edington

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The National Health Planning Act of 1974 designated 200 Health Systems Agencies (HSAs) nationally and a State Health Planning and Development Agency in each state. Components of the law are analyzed to illustrate its ambiguities and contradictions. The components analyzed are: the findings which led to the passage of the law; the law's purpose; the ten national health priorities; the National Guidelines for Health Planning; the purposes of the HSAs and the data they are to assemble and analyze. The major contradiction is that agencies designated to focus on cost containment in health care are expected to make health care …

Mission Neighborhood Health Center: A Case Study Of The Department Of Health Education And Welfare As A Counterinsurgency Agency, Thomas S. Bodenheimer

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In the 1960's, working class communities all over the country, particularly minority inner city neighborhoods, exploded in violent anger. The federal government responded with a pacification or cooling-out program: the War on Poverty. The War on Poverty provided federal funds to bring a few programs into the community, to create a few jobs, and to buy off working class leaders who were a threat to those in power. In the course of this program of counterinsurgency, the War on Poverty took over a slogan of the 1960's, "community control," and turned it into its opposite; rather than control by the …

The Impact Of Consumerism On Health Care Change: Alternatives For The Future?, Allen W. Imershein, Eugenia T. Miller

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The quest for consumer participation in the management of health care delivery may have experienced its first signs of success, but the implications of that success are as yet unclear. The establishment of consumer majorities on the newly developed health systems agency (HSA) boards was seen as an important milestone in the development of the consumer movement in America over the last ten years. The initial wave of optimism over the Great Society programs that in part gave birth to the consumer movement has long since vanished, but some of the organizational results of those attempts at innovation have become …