INFORMATION, MARKET GOVERNMENT, AND HEALTH-POLICY - A STUDY OF HEALTH DATA ORGANIZATIONS IN THE STATES

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: OVERMAN, ES; CAHILL, AG
• 署名单位: University of Maine System; University of Maine Orono
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1520-6842
• DOI: 10.2307/3325385
• 发表日期: 1994
• 页码: 435-453
• 关键词: economic competition; CHOICE; search; care

摘要

Information is essential to the success of market-oriented policies. Information on health care costs and quality is collected and distributed by state governments through health data organizations (HDOs) to enhance competition and lower costs in the medical industry and to improve consumer choice among medical alternatives. This article examines the information collected, produced, and distributed by state health data organizations in Colorado and Pennsylvania. Findings reveal that information was not the objective determinant of choice and competition as market-oriented policy designers had hoped. Nor did market-oriented bureaucracies produce and distribute data readily accessible for public choice. Instead, information produced and distributed by these HDOs was the result of political and bureaucratic exercises that conform much more to classic interest group policymaking and captured bureaucracies than to contemporary market-oriented government ideals. The findings underscore the extraordinary difficulties facing federal-level policy designers as they contemplate introducing market-oriented health care policies on the national level.