The inverse care law is the principle that the availability of good medical or social care tends to vary inversely with the need of the population served.
Proposed by
Julian Tudor Hart
Alan Julian Macbeth Tudor-Hart (9 March 1927 – 1 July 2018), commonly known as Julian Tudor Hart, was a British doctor who worked as a general practitioner (GP) in Wales for 30 years. He was involved with research and wrote many books and s ...
in 1971, the term has since been widely adopted.
It is considered a landmark publication in the history of ''
The Lancet
''The Lancet'' is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind. It is also the world's highest-impact academic journal. It was founded in England in 1823.
The journal publishes original research articles, ...
''.
The name is a
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
on
inverse-square law, a term and concept from
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
.
The law states that:
''"The availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served. This ... operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, and less so where such exposure is reduced."''
Hart later paraphrased his argument: "To the extent that health care becomes a commodity it becomes distributed just like champagne. That is rich people get lots of it. Poor people don’t get any of it."
The Inverse Care Law is a key issue in debates about the provision of health care and
health inequality.
As
Frank Dobson
Frank Gordon Dobson (15 March 1940 – 11 November 2019) was a British Labour Party politician. As Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St. Pancras from 1979 to 2015, he served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Health from 1997 t ...
put it when he was United Kingdom
Secretary of State for Health
The secretary of state for health and social care, also referred to as the health secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the work of the Department of Health and Social Care. The incumbent ...
: "Inequality in health is the worst inequality of all. There is no more serious inequality than knowing that you'll die sooner because you're badly off."
Further reading
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See also
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Health policy
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Inverse benefit law
The inverse benefit law states that the ratio of benefits to harms among patients taking new drugs tends to vary inversely with how extensively a drug is marketed. Two Americans, Howard Brody and Donald Light, have defined the inverse benefit law ...
*
Patient safety
Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in health care through the prevention, reduction, reporting and analysis of error and other types of unnecessary harm that often lead to adverse patient events. The frequency and magnitude of ...
*
Public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...
References
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Health economics
Social inequality
Public health
Determinants of health
Adages