The Choice Agenda' in European Health Systems: The Role of 'Middle Class Demands

Joan Costa-i-Font and Valentina Zigante

LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series from European Institute, LSE

Abstract: We examine the role of political economy drivers of the choice agenda in European health systems including middle class electoral support. Building on the reform trajectories and current institutional framework in eight western European countries where there have been significant choice reforms, we explore the preferences for choice and health system satisfaction in those countries. We find provider choice to be supported by middle class demands and health systems satisfaction, but weak evidence of other alternative political motivations for the expansion of provider choice. We conclude that in addition to efficiency improvements, provider choice is largely correlated with the demands for choice among the middle class. The provider choice agenda responds as much to political economy consideration as it does to efficiency arguments.

Keywords: provider choice; health system satisfaction; tax funded health systems; middle class demands (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/LEQS/LEQSPaper82.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/LEQS/LEQSPaper82.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/LEQS/LEQSPaper82.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eiq:eileqs:82

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series from European Institute, LSE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Katjana Gattermann ().