Discuss One Of Wilkinson's Arguments About The Value Of Community In Health Care

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1. Succinctly summarise the main argument that Wilkinson advances in this paper (2-3 sentences).
Wilkinson draws on the importance and value of community, ideas of communitarianism and individualism and impacts public health to prove that community doesn’t help with resource allocation in health. Wilkinson believes if resource allocation is left to the free market with state controlling the allocation then health economics is unrelated to community. Also, polities would not help communities allocate resources as community will indirectly identify who can and cannot access healthcare. If communities have more power in resource allocation issues may result such as post-code lottery, cross subsidising, lack of a decision-making body and addressing population issues and not community problems (Wilkinson, 2010).
2. Explain one of Wilkinson’s arguments about the value of community in health resource allocation.
Politics and health economics are main drivers of resource allocation and Wilkinson believes that community has little involvement in this and thus, is not valuable. State involvement in relation to health economics could be related directly to the allocation of money and not necessarily health resources. If this occurred then resource distribution would be left to the free market where …show more content…

Also, calls for state involvement arise due to the claim that people are unable to provide for their health care long term and for the provision of public health services such as research, disease surveillance and sanitation. Despite these calls for state involvement there is little community contribution because these public services will be provided regardless of if a community wants them or not so the value of community isn’t relied on (Wilkinson,