Social Transformation of American Healthcare

The history of medicine is an epic of progress, but it is also a story of social and economic conflicts that emerge around new hierarchies of power and authority, new markets, and new conditions of belief and experience.In this book, Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, not only traces the origins of America's current healthcare institutions and policies but also examines the fates of those that developed only to wither away, be repealed, or face obstruction. For readers with diverse concerns, his dual structural and historical analysis sheds light on the predicament of America's current healthcare system-and indeed, healthcare dilemmas everywhere.