Inverse care law

Short description: Adage about availability of health care

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.[1] Proposed by Julian Tudor Hart in 1971, the term has since been widely adopted.[2] It is considered a landmark publication in the history of The Lancet.[3] The name is a pun on inverse-square law, a term and concept from physics.

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."[4]

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."[2]

The Inverse Care Law is a key issue in debates about the provision of health care and health inequality.[5] As Frank Dobson put it when he was United Kingdom Secretary of State for Health: "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."[6]

## See also

* Health policy
* Inverse benefit law
* Patient safety
* Public health

## References

1. ↑ Van De Pas, Remco; Widdowson, Marc-Alain; Ravinetto, Raffaella; N Srinivas, Prashanth; Ochoa, Theresa J.; Fofana, Thierno Oumar; Van Damme, Wim (2 January 2022). "COVID-19 vaccine equity: a health systems and policy perspective". Expert Review of Vaccines 21 (1): 25–36. doi:10.1080/14760584.2022.2004125. ISSN 1476-0584. PMID 34758678.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Saul, Peter (27 February 2021). "How much has really changed 50 years on from seminal article on health inequality?". Nation.Cymru. https://nation.cymru/opinion/how-much-has-really-changed-50-years-on-from-seminal-article-on-health-inequality/.
3. ↑ The Lancet (27 February 2021). "50 years of the inverse care law" (in English). The Lancet 397 (10276): 767. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00505-5. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 33640043.
4. ↑ Tudor Hart, J. (1971). "The Inverse Care Law". The Lancet 297 (7696): 405–412. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(71)92410-X. PMID 4100731.
5. ↑ Watt, Graham (December 2018). "The inverse care law revisited: a continuing blot on the record of the National Health Service". The British Journal of General Practice 68 (677): 562–563. doi:10.3399/bjgp18X699893. ISSN 0960-1643. PMID 30498141.
6. ↑ "GOVT TAKES ACTION TO REDUCE HEALTH INEQUALITIES". Local Government Chronicle. 12 August 1997. http://www.lgcplus.com/govt-takes-action-to-reduce-health-inequalities/1494985.article.

## Further reading

* Tudor Hart, J. (1971). "The Inverse Care Law". The Lancet 297 (7696): 405–412. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(71)92410-X. PMID 4100731.
* Watt, G. (2002). "The inverse care law today". The Lancet 360 (9328): 252–254. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)09466-7. PMID 12133675.
* Cooper, K. (2010). "A Reappraisal of the Inverse Care Law". Socialist Health Association. http://www.sochealth.co.uk/public-health-and-wellbeing/poverty-and-inequality/the-inverse-care-law/a-reappraisal-of-the-inverse-care-law/.

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