Journal article
A historical perspective on the health-care industry
Health communications and informatics, Vol.5(5-6), pp.256-286
1979
Abstract
This paper presents a brief history describing the evolution of the health-services industry. The industry's history reflects first its concern over the quality of the services, then the level of access to these services, and finally the price-cost containment of these services. Special attention is given to examining how the characteristics of medical services has influenced the course of the industry's development. Section 2 of this paper traces the impact of these characteristics on the development of the health industry and describes how they have helped to forge a market structure found in the post-World War II era. In section 3, the authors briefly evaluate the performance of the industry in the last quarter century and examine some of the market failures. Whenever there are market failures, the government has tended to intervene. Section 4 summarizes some key health care legislation. The paper concludes with an observation that public policies have not been entirely successful and suggests that the reason for this lack of success is that the policies have been designed to cover or compensate for market imperfections. The authors believe that policies should have been directed instead to encourage incentives and strengthen market performance.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A historical perspective on the health-care industry
- Creators
- C. Fethke - United StatesS. Y. Wu - United States
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Health communications and informatics, Vol.5(5-6), pp.256-286
- ISSN
- 0378-9845
- Number of pages
- 31
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 1979
- Academic Unit
- Marketing
- Record Identifier
- 9984963046002771
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