Market-Oriented Health Care Reforms and Policy Learning in the Netherlands

In this article we analyze the evolution of market-oriented health care reforms in the Netherlands. We argue that these reforms can be characterized as policy learning within and between competing policy programs. Policy learning denotes the process by which policy makers and stakeholders deliberately adjust the goals, rules, and techniques of a given policy in response to past experiences and new information. We discern three distinctive periods. During the first period (1988-1994), the prevailing corporatist and etatist policy programs were seriously challenged by the proponents of a new mar... Mehr ...