Learn about health and medicine in THE SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND HEALTH CARE: A CRITICAL APPROACH, which presents a comprehensive overview of contemporary sociological topics and challenges readers to question their previously held beliefs about health, illness, and health care.

Examines the problem of soaring medical costs, discusses the future role of the physician, hospital, and new drugs, and looks at how medical care will be funded

Few contemporary social problems in the U.S. affect more people daily than those within the American health care system. Social Movements and the Transformation of American Health Care is the first collection of essays to examine dynamics of change in health care institutions through the lens of contemporary theory and research on collective action. Gathering scholars from medicine, health policy, history, sociology, and political science, the book considers health-related social movements from four distinct levels, concentrating on movements seeking changes in the regulation, financing, and distribution of health resources; changes in institutions in public health, bio-ethics, and other fields; interactions between social movements and professions; and the cultural dominance of the medical model, and the difficulties for framing and legitimizing new issues in health care it poses. At a time when American health care is long overdue for major changes, this book takes an essential look at movements, policies, and institutions to identify the common constraints and opportunities for reform within the health care system.

A no-holds-barred look at the follies and foibles of the American health-care system describes the author's own encounter as a hard-living, middle-aged male with a three-day 'executive checkup' at the Mayo Clinic, his new understanding of his own mortality, the Bush administration's opposition to the stem-cell research that could save his daughter's life, and other political and medical issues. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

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