Executive Summary: What Do We Know? Key Findings from 50 Years of Medical Sociology

For much of 2009 and early 2010, discussions of health care policies dominated national discourse in the United States. The prolonged and often acrimonious debates brought into sharp focus the enormous, complex, and highly fragmented system that provides health care in the United States. Considerable attention was also devoted to demonstrating the advanced state of this country’s medical knowledge, technology, and health services. The debates also highlighted the great shortcomings and problematic nature of the American health care delivery system. While millions of Americans have little or no access to health care, millions of dollars are spent on the health care of a relatively few Americans. This unequal distribution raises moral and ethical questions about basic social justice and a misallocation of resources that is economically costly to society. There is ample evidence that these disparities cost American society billions of dollars in medical care and lost productivity. The contentious debates over health care reform in the U.S. demonstrate the need for credible empirical research that is widely available to both the public and policy experts so that it can help frame the complex issues involved in policy discussions. For more than half a century, medical sociologists have provided such research insights into many of the great health policy challenges we have faced. This extra issue of the American Sociological Association’s premier Journal of Health and Social Behavior synthesizes many of the contributions from this community of scholars, summarized here by leading sociologists. B. tHe VAStly cHAngeD lAnDScApe Of HeAltH In 2010