Privatisation in health care: concepts, motives and policies

Over the last decade privatisation has been used frequently as a policy instrument to reduce the financial burden of the public sector. In most countries there is a mix of public and private interests in health care. Because of this, privatisation is an important issue in health care policy analysis. In this article we deal with different concepts and motives for privatisation in general. We will distinguish various types of privatisation and show how these can be applied to changes in health care policy. As far as the latter is concerned we will use Dutch experiences. In the analysis we emphasise especially the effects of privatisation in health care on the private non-profit organizations.