• AcademyHealth: Competition matters

      12/17/2013
      Austin Frakt

    The research by Marty Gaynor, Rodrigo Moreno-Serra, and Carol Propper on the effects of hospital competition in the UK is worth knowing about. If you don’t, read my AcademyHealth post.

    @afrakt

     

     
      Health Policy
      AcademyHealth, competition, hospitals, NHS, UK
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    • by Matthew on December 17th, 2013 at 15:34

      Has anyone done the same sort of thing with the Taiwan system?

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    • by robert aylward on December 17th, 2013 at 16:34

      “I must admit, I’m a bit jealous that the UK has made great strides in improving its delivery system, at least in the way documented by the work of Gaynor et al. Most of the policy debate in the US pertains to how to provide affordable health insurance. Our peer countries have all addressed that issue, though costs remain a concern throughout the world. Having done so, there is more room in the political and policy discourse of those other countries for health system improvement, such as that achieved with more hospital competition in the UK. I look forward to the day when we’re able to more fully focus on that as well.” Sadly, I’m not so sure that day will ever come. I hate to be pessimistic, but Francis Fukuyama may well be right: we have a problem, a problem with no discernible solution “short of an outright system collapse”.

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