Beyond ubiquity: Unravelling medicalisation within the frame of health insurance and health-policy making

Abstract

Besides being extensively studied by health sociologists, medicalisation has also become a term that frequently appears in mainstream discourses on health and illness. Recently, scholars started to acknowledge a greater complexity within medicalisation. This article is situated within this research tradition and draws on three recurring critiques on the validity of medicalisation; critique on the construct validity, internal validity and external validity. By examining the interests and network of health-policy stakeholders, this article attempts to unravel different mechanisms of medicalisation and demedicalisation within a social health insurance system. The empirical data for this article derive from 30 elite interviews with key informants from 18 organisations in Belgium. Key representatives of these organisations provided us with in-depth information about their political intentions and interests. This study provides empirical evidence that both medicalisation and demedicalisation are different processes that can occur simultaneously. Furthermore, in order to facilitate studies on medicalisation in an institutional context, this article proposes some indicators for medicalisation and demedicalisation.