The relative effi­ciency of public and private service delivery

Overview

The relative roles of the  public and privateb  sectors  in healthcare provision have and continue to evolve over time.   Reforms stem back to 19th  century  neoclassical economics  that  market  solutions lead to  more  efficient allocation of resources, uncertainties over how the healthcare  market would respond to these institutions and, more recently, to  new public management theories and the influence of  multilaterals.  The  debate  over the relative merits  of private and public provision seeks to answer the question “who  would more efficiently  provide public  goods?”

This report is part of a series, The World Health Report 2010 Background Papers, which were written to inform the process of developing the key messages of the World Health Report 2010: Health systems financing: The path to universal coverage.