ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how sovereign planners deal with two major sets of choices pertaining to engineering affordable care policy, focusing on what kinds of health care services ought to be made available to the user, and how they are provided. First, the chapter analyzes how sovereign planners addressed the choices of which types of health care services and entitlements in the proposed classification scheme consisting of four types of health care service and analyzing the roles of the state and/or markets in each type. The chapter deals with the proper mix of the health care services as well as the issue of operational definitions of basic medical care (i.e. essential, affordable care) within the mix. Second, the study tries to examine policymakers’ choices pertaining to the ways and process of rebuilding and reinventing institutions and management in the health care sector during the economic reform period. Building upon two dimensions (de-regulation and property-centered restructuring), the study identifies four paths of reform: administrative mode, commercialization, property-centered reforms, and full-fledged marketization. The study addresses the following questions: in organizational and managerial terms, is the state preferable to the markets or a combination of the two in the restructuring of the health care sector? And vice versa? And in which type of health care services?
