Competition in the Dutch Health Care Sector

For more than two decades, Dutch health policy has been marked by a search for a suitable market order in health care. Suitable in the sense of maintaining universal access, containing the growth of health care expenditure and improving the technical and allocative efficiency of health care delivery. This search was spurred by the seemingly uncontrollable escalation of health care expenditure during the early 1970s. The solution initially put forward to control health care cost inflation was that of comprehensive government planning. Although the envisioned sophisticated health planning largel... Mehr ...