Death or Transfiguration? The Changing Government of the Health Care State.

The paper redresses an imbalance in the study of the welfare state: the comparative neglect of health care programmes as sources of evidence about the changing politics of the welfare state. It explains why health care should be central to our understanding of the welfare state; summarises the present debates about the pressures on welfare states; explains how to think about the health care governance in this connection; develops a typology of 'health care states'; and shows how the experience of health care reflects, and how it departs from, the wider experience of welfare states.