Research Paper on:
Healthcare Law and The State

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
is a misnomer; the real agenda is the efficient management and control of populations by and for the State. This may be a controversial view, but there is evidence that  this is the underlying paradigm of the law concerning healthcare. There are many areas of law where this argument can be explored; we will start by looking at increased state  involvement when the NHS was developed and the concept of confidentiality and how the state controls what can be deemed as confidential.  The concept of patient confidentially has been seen since the days of Hippocrates, but the regulation has been broadly down controlled by the integrity of medical practitioners. This model was  one which was mainly self-regulating, and to a lesser extent, in former days when payment was made for medical practitioners services, it was also a model that was necessary for  commercial survival; a patient would not consult a doctor who was indiscrete (Porter, 1999). In the past the profession was more fragmented and competitive, the current paradigm of the NHS  with medical practitioners mostly having a common employer (or contractor), is a relativity new situation (Porter, 1999). If we look at the  situation historically the state has not always involved itself in healthcare. At the begiunnig of the twentyith century there was only one statute dealing with healthcare on the books; the  1848 Public Health Act, however this was mostly a preventative tool, aimed at reducing risks (Pennington, 1998). The voluntary hospitals that were in place did receive some government funding from  local or central sources, but this was limited (Cherry, 1997). However much of the funding came form the communities which they served by way of regular subscriptions made form wages