SOCI 260 - Health, Medicine, and Public Policy

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as STS 260) Health care represents one of the thorniest arenas of public policy today. Current issues include the rising numbers of uninsured, concerns over privacy, protection of the public from emerging infectious diseases, the debate between health care as a right vs. a privilege, and the ways in which we conceive the relationship between health, medicine, and society. This course begins with an analysis of the ‘social construction’ of health, looking particularly at the issue of AIDS, national and international. We then examine policies arising from epidemic or infectious diseases, including the Black Death, the 1918 Influenza epidemic, and Typhoid Mary, as well as contemporary dilemmas over newly emergent diseases. Finally, we consider controversies over national health insurance, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian health care system, the Massachusetts experiment, and the history of Medicare and Medicaid. Ms. Miringoff.