In latest years there has been a growing interest on factors explaining health expenditure at a regional level. Indeed, in the case of Italy, even though the health care system was initially designed as a centralized one, the government has progressively undertaken a decentralization process up to the point of modifying the Constitution in order to appoint regions with exclusive health care res...

Congress is considering proposals to improve its financing of long-term care. The key issue is whether it should support a social insurance program or a program targeted to a population group defined by income and assets. Social insurance is expensive, costing between $15 and $20 billion. For the most part, it provides benefits--primarily asset protection--to middle- and upper-income individual...

OBJECTIVE. This study examined whether age, gender, and comorbidity were of importance for an individual's choice of listing with either a public or a private primary health care (PHC) practice. DESIGN AND SETTING. The study was a register-based closed cohort study in one private and one public PHC practice in Blekinge County in southern Sweden. Subjects. A cohort (12 696 individuals) was studi...

This article provides a framework to guide the choice and design of a fitting Public Private Partnerships (PPP), which is applied to a Dutch example of biogas/sustainable energy projects. The framework focuses on ‘legitimate public governance’, merging Beetham’s dimensions of legitimacy (legality, shared beliefs and consent) with three types of governance mechanisms (market, network and hierarc...

There has been less controversy over the ownership of care provider agencies, but interest has grown over the last decade. State and Territory governments claim different views but all have transferred work to the private sector, ranging from outsourcing of particular functions (like cleaning) to complete privatisation – where a private company builds, owns and operates a facility serving mainl...