ABSTRACT
Healthcare is delivered by different organizations with very different cultural backgrounds, both public and private, that should be accountable for their decisions. In all the countries where healthcare access is considered a social right, regulation is both a tool for performance improvement and an instrument of social justice.
Healthcare regulation has grown worldwide to serve as a means of performance improvement. Different regulatory systems serve to overcome government and market failures. The main goal of healthcare regulation in public healthcare systems should be to find the point of equilibrium between equity and efficiency. Further, regulatory agencies should try to accomplish social (equity in access) and economic (promoting competition) regulation. In traditional approaches of public choice, theorists emphasize the need to maximize efficiency. However, equity and quality are at least equally important drivers of the healthcare systems in modern society.
For public systems within an entrepreneurial culture, independent supervision is a good solution to overcome common failures, for example, when public providers compete with private ones for public funding in healthcare quasi-markets. Regulation, when properly implemented, preserves the core values of the welfare state, namely equity, solidarity, efficiency, and responsiveness.
