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On the Fuzzy Boundaries between Public and Private in Health Care Organization and Funding Systems

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Abstract

The paper proposes a survey of health care organization and funding systems in order to underline and discuss, in this specific field of social assistance, the combination public versus private provision and production of services. The survey then examines the present features of various National health services focusing on the efficiency and equity of public intervention and on the industrial organization of the institutional design of health care. In this context, it treats the rationale of cost-benefit of vertical integration of structures, devoted respectively to purchasing and providing health care services. Further, the paper considers the advantages and disadvantages of managed competition in quasi-markets and, finally, it deals with insurance systems, social as well private and supplementary ones. From the survey it turns out that the main distinctions of health care regimes in industrialised countries are not in terms of private versus public ownership of providers, rather in terms of industrial organization setting and in terms of the proportion of public versus private expenditure.

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  • Alessandro Petretto, 2010. "On the Fuzzy Boundaries between Public and Private in Health Care Organization and Funding Systems," Working Papers - Economics wp2010_09.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
  • Handle: RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2010_09.rdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Lisa Grazzini & Alessandro Petretto, 2013. "Health and Education: Challenges and Financial Constraints," Working Papers - Economics wp2013_19.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    2. Alessandro Petretto, 2014. "A note on standard costs criteria for allocating the Italian national health fund to Regions," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(2), pages 5-21.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health care organization; health care funding; social insurance; private and public provision.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods

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