This paper departs from the standard abstract economics approach to health economics to develop a specifically contextualist approach to the subject emphasizing social and historical circumstances affecting health provision. Following Polanyi, it sees the economy as socially embedded and...

Standard health economics concentrates on the provision of care by medical professionals. Yet ‘care’ receives scant analysis; it is portrayed as a spillover effect or externality in the form of interdependent utility functions. In this context care can only be conceived as either acts of...

"The analytical approach of standard health economics has so far failed to sufficiently account for the nature of care.? This has important ramifications for the analysis and valuation of care, and therefore for the pattern of health and medical care provision. This book sets out an alternative...