Explaining a paradox: Church and health policy in the 1940s and 1970s

Title: Explaining a paradox: Church and health policy in the 1940s and 1970s
Creator: Belcher, Helen
Relation: Australasian Catholic Record Vol. 85, Issue 3, p. 259-273
Publisher: Australasian Catholic Record
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2008
Description: In the mid-twentieth century many doctors, supported by private hospitals and conservative politicians, argued that health care should be underwritten by voluntary health insurance. Where this was not possible access should be supported by charity. Based on the premise that health care was a right, not a matter of charity, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) argued for collective responsibility either in the form of cash benefits or direct public provision. Catholics, however, favoured a path advocated in Catholic social teaching, i.e. corporatism – a set of arrangements, which requires the state to work through existing social groups. Consequently they argued for a system of social support based upon the family as the first provider, assisted by intermediate organisations, and only then the state, a relationship predicated upon the principle of subsidiarity.
Subject: health care; health insurance; Catholic Church; Medicare; Labor government
Identifier: uon:5610
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/43511
Identifier: ISSN:0727-3215
Full Text
Reviewed

		Thumbnail	File	Description	Size	Format
View Details Download			ATTACHMENT01	Publisher version (open access)	90 KB	Adobe Acrobat PDF	View Details Download