Need, competence and compliance: Selective empowering in the distribution of medical technologies in the Norwegian health care system

Abstract

The development of medical technologies is often assumed to improve medical treatment, but may also reproduce health inequalities if their benefits are unequally distributed. Sociological studies have shown that social and moral evaluations matter for medical decision making, and that inequalities in access and outcome exist even in universal health care systems. This article uses the distribution of medical technologies in the treatment of type 1 diabetes as a case for examining the social production of health care inequalities. Drawing on observational data and in-depth interviews with physicians and nurses working in a Norwegian hospital, I demonstrate that medical staff evaluate patients based on a combination of medical, social and moral criteria. The concept of selective empowering is then elaborated and refined as a term for the practice in which medical professionals steer resources towards patients based on evaluations of need, competence and compliance. While previous studies of inequalities in medical care have often focused on medical staff’s cognitive dispositions, I argue that selective empowering may be interpreted as a reflexive response to increasing health care costs and a structural dependency on expensive and commercially produced medical technologies.