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Date:
May 29, 2002 (Wednesday)
Time: 18:00 - 19:30 hrs
Venue: Room LG104, KK Leung Building, Main Campus, The University
of Hong Kong, Pokfulam.
In
recent years many economists have advocated an increased role for
the market in the health care sector. Proposals range from hospital
privatization, to the separation of financing from the provision
of services within public systems, to the creation of competitive
markets for private insurance to finance care. The analyses which
lie behind these suggestions are quite varied. Some suggestions
come from critics of poor public sector performance who see markets
and privatization as the only hope. Some seek to tap private capital
to supplement limited public funds. And some of these proposals
come from those philosophically opposed to uniform public programs
who want to allow the rich to spend more and get more than they
often can under existing arrangements.
However
health care markets have several important and unique characteristics
which have to be taken into account in any use of market principles
in this sector. Patients know more about their own health status
than insurers but less about what care is appropriate than their
doctors. Doctors often have serious conflicts of interest when they
act as the "agents" for their patients. And since the
chronically ill are bad risks, insurance companies have every reason
to not sell insurance at affordable prices to those who need it
most.
Given
all of these difficulties, what is the appropriate role for the
market in health care? Where can we expect it to work more or less
satisfactorily. What policies can governments follow to get the
advantages of the market's incentives and the market's responsiveness
without also having to suffer from some of its undesirable features?
Professor
Roberts' research focuses on the development and implementation
of public policy within the broad areas of environmental policy
and the organization of health care systems. His book on health
care reform, Your Money or Your Life, written with Alexandra Clyde,
is designed to be a citizens guide--written in non-technical language--to
help individuals understand the current debate. He and his co-authors
are also revising and updating their classic study of policy development
at E.P.A., published five years ago by Oxford University Press,
with new material about the Bush and Clinton administrations. Roberts'
work spans the gamut from the most detailed to the most abstract.
Listed below are some of his selected publications:
Roberts
MJ with Clyde A. Your Money or Your Life: The Health Care Crisis
Explained. Doubleday, 1993.
Landy
M, Roberts MJ, and Thomas S. E.P.A.: Asking the Wrong Questions.
Oxford: University Press, revised paperback edition, 1994.
Graham
JD, Green LC, and Roberts MJ. In Search of Safety: Chemicals
and Cancer Risk, Harvard University Press, 1988.
Lauterbach
K and Roberts MJ. Applied Ethics and The Practice of Public Health:
A Student Handbook.
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