Findings from University of Chile Has Provided New Data on Health Policy

Managed Care Weekly Digest

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- Researchers detail new data in Health Policy. According to news reporting originating in Santiago, Chile, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "The Chilean health system has experienced important transformations in the last decades with a neoliberal turn to privatization of the health insurance and healthcare market since the Pinochet reforms of the 1980s. During 20 years of center-left political coalition governments several reforms were attempted to regulate and reform such markets."

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the University of Chile, "This paper analyzes regulatory policies for the private health insurance and health care delivery market, adopted during the 1990-2010 period. A framework of variation in market types developed by Gingrich is adopted as analytical perspective. The set of policies advanced in this period could be expected to shift the responsibility of access to care from individuals to the collective and give control to the State or the consumers vis a vis producers. Nevertheless, the effect of the implemented reforms has been mixed. Regulations on private health insurers were ineffective in terms of shifting power to the consumer or the state. In contrast, the healthcare delivery market showed a trend of increasing payers' and consumers' control and the set of implemented reforms partially steered the market toward collective responsibility of access by creating a submarket of guaranteed services (AUGE) with lower copayments and fully funded services. Emerging unintended consequences of the adopted policies and potential explanations are discussed."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "In sum, attempts to use regulation to improve the collective dimension of the Chilean health system has enabled some progress, but several challenges had persisted."

For more information on this research see: Health policy in the concertacion era (1990-2010): Reforms the chilean way. Social Science & Medicine, 2017;182():117-126. Social Science & Medicine can be contacted at: Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Social Science & Medicine - www.journals.elsevier.com/social-science-and-medicine/)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting M.S. Martinez-Gutierrez, University of Chile, Escuela Salud Public, Programa Polit Sistemas & Gest Salud, Santiago 8380453, Chile (see also Health Policy).