IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v51y2000i6p897-904.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Private health care

Author

Listed:
  • Uplekar, Mukund W.

Abstract

During the last decade there has been considerable international mobilisation around shrinking the role of States in health care. The World Bank reports that, in many low and middle-income countries, private sources of finance comprise the largest share of total national health expenditures. Private sector health care is ubiquitous, reaches throughout the population, preferred by the people and is significant from both economic as well as health perspective. Resources are limited, governments are weak, and a new approach is needed. This paper provides a broad overview and raises key issues with regard to private health care. The focus is on provision of health care by private medical providers. On the background of the world's common health problems and interventions available to tackle them, the place of private health care in the overall context is first discussed. The concept of privatisation within the various forms of health care systems is then explained. The paper then describes the genesis and key elements of rapidly enhancing role of the private sector in health care and points to the paucity of literature from low and middle-income countries. Common concerns about private health care are outlined. Two illustrative examples -- tuberculosis, the top infectious killer among the poor and coronary heart disease, the top non-infectious killer among the rich -- are presented to understand the current and possible role of private sector in provision of health care. Highlighting the need to distinguish between health care as a public good or a market commodity, the paper leaves it to the reader to draw conclusions.

Suggested Citation

  • Uplekar, Mukund W., 2000. "Private health care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 897-904, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:6:p:897-904
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00069-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Blomgren, Maria & Sundén, Eva, 2008. "Constructing a European healthcare market: The private healthcare company Capio and the strategic aspect of the drive for transparency," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(10), pages 1512-1520, November.
    2. Thang Dang, 2018. "Do the more educated utilize more health care services? Evidence from Vietnam using a regression discontinuity design," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 277-299, September.
    3. De Costa, Ayesha & Johannson, Eva, 2011. "By ‘default or design’? The expansion of the private health care sector in Madhya Pradesh, India," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 283-289.
    4. Lim, Meng-Kin, 2004. "Shifting the burden of health care finance: a case study of public-private partnership in Singapore," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 83-92, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:6:p:897-904. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.