The European Journal of Public Health 2009 19(5):448-450; doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckp146
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. All rights reserved.
Privatization processes in health care in Europe—a move in the right direction, a ‘trendy’ option, or a step back?
Tit Albreht
Institute of Public Health Slovenia
Correspondence: Tit Albreht. e-mail: tit.albreht@ivz-rs.si
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Conceptualizing privatization
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Privatization in health care is a hot topic of discussion in
most European countries. Driven by the political agenda, privatization
as a general process in the society is often offered as a panacea
for all sorts of problems, where health care is seen as one
of the potential areas of implementation. This requires some
initial delimitations and clear definitions of basic terms.
Let us take the definition proposed by the European observatory
on health systems and policies: ‘Privatisation is the
transfer of ownership AND government functions from public to
private bodies, which may consist of voluntary organisations
and for-profit and not-for-profit organisations’. In everyday
life, we see that these components are taken at leisure and
are then combined with different preferences. Therefore, it
is useful to develop both concepts as well as criticisms around
them. There is a taxonomy proposed by Saltman
1, differentiating
between different categories of public and
. . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Reasons for privatization
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Modalities of privatization
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Risks of privatization and the possible precautionary measures
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Convergence or divergence of systems across Europe with respect to privatization processes
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Conclusions and recommendations
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