Production of Healthcare

The issue of production of healthcare services basically concerns the policy framework which allows both the public and the private sector players in the market. This has become necessary because there are a range of problems besetting the sole public production which have similar parallels in its private counterpart.

The problems relate, among other things, to:

(i) Public accountability,

(ii) Informational asymmetry,

(iii) Abuse of monopoly power, and

(iv) Failure of strategic policy formulation.

Barring a few countries, perfect monopoly by an exclusive public sector role now does not exist anywhere. In most countries, the production aspects relate to restructuring what is already a complex mix of public and private roles in the health sector.