Medicalization, public policy and the elderly: Social services in jeopardy?

Binney, Elizabeth A.; Estes, Carroll L.; Ingman, Stanley R.

doi:10.1016/0277-9536(90)90199-3

Cited by 33 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Healthism may be related to the increasing "medicalization" of old age in Western societies identified by some scholars (Ng et al 2015). Increased focus on the medical aspects of being old -to the exclusion of other dimensions of older age -is reflected at the level of policy and reimbursement in the geriatric health care setting, and has a clear impact on provider choices, service availability, and quality of care (Binney et al 1990). A recent sociological study of changes in culture-based age stereotypes appearing in print over the past 200 years in the USA found an increasing association over time between the mention of an older adult and references to the medical status of that person, using words such as "sickness" or "stamina" (Ng et al 2015).…”

Section: Factors Associated With Ageism In the Medical Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ageism in the Health Care System: Providers, Patients, and Systems

Wyman

Shiovitz-Ezra

Bengel

2018

International Perspectives on Aging

190

117

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Section: Factors Associated With Ageism In the Medical Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ageism in the Health Care System: Providers, Patients, and Systems

Wyman

Shiovitz-Ezra

Bengel

2018

International Perspectives on Aging

190

117

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“…Neglected are the social dimensions of illness, such as the environment; occupational hazards; effects of class, race, and gender; effects on families; and so on (Engel 1977:130;Fee and Krieger 1993;Gifford 1986: 238-239;MacIntyre 1979: 89-90). Moreover the focus on the individual, combined with the increased jurisdiction of biomedicine, displaces nonmedical, traditional social support systems (Binney et al 1990). If anything, the result is increased dependence on biomedicine, technology, and state support.…”

Section: Frankford Scientisrn and Economism 779mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Moreover, just as biomedicine traps its objects in a cycle of dependence by displacing alternative forms of organization (Binney et al 1990), political scientism induces continued reliance on technocratic fixes by eliminating other forms of political action. Rather than rely on extant or alternative institutions to deliberate over the uses of technology, our political actors rely on quantitative recipes-whether in the form of practice guidelines, DRGs, relative-value scales, QALYs, and the like (Frankford 1994).…”

Section: Frankford Scientism and Economism 785mentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientism and Economism in the Regulation of Health Care

Frankford

1994

Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law

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As health care costs continue their apparently relentless rise, it seems to be universally perceived that the United States and western Europe are gripped by a cost crisis. To resolve the apparent crisis, U.S. and western European governments and third-party payers are turning increasingly to a new positivist discipline, called health services research, for which neoclassical health economics is the dominant discourse. However this discipline may actually reinforce the strength of biomedical positivism and the concomitant technological imperative. Like biomedicine, health services research is technologically driven, dependent on "advances" that generate more comprehensive and therefore more "accurate" data. Accordingly, just as biomedicine causes health care workers and patients to depend on technologies for diagnosis and treatment, health services research instills in the body politic dependence on technocratically conceived solutions for political problems. Moreover, because biomedicine and health services research share positivist epistemic and methodological premises, both objectify the subjects they study, abstract those subjects from context, and thereby ignore the cultural dimensions of the problems at hand. Rather than inculcate an ethic and practice in which medicine focuses on the meaning of illness for a life, a cultural phenomenon, this form of positivism strengthens the tendency to reject meaning in favor of the causes and course of disease and the abstracted probability of its occurrence. Accordingly health services research and the forms of regulation with which it is allied threaten to overwhelm the medical humanities movement. Furthermore this scientism precludes the institutionalization of political forums in which we can deliberate on the meaning of medicine, health, and death in our lives.

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“…mainly for-profit agencies were adding highly medical services. Also, Medicare-certified agencies were more likely to add highly medical services than noncertified Lenard W. Kaye (Binney, 1990). This points to the connection between diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) and high-tech home health care.…”

Section: The High-tech Home Health Care Boommentioning

confidence: 99%