Seminar
“Can We Compare Health Care Systems”
- Date:
- 22 Jun 07
- Host:
- OHE Lunchtime Seminar
- Speakers:
- Professor Theodore Marmor, Yale School of Management
- Full Description
- Policy makers in the UK and elsewhere are understandably tempted to adopt health policies that have been successful elsewhere, and researchers are keen to identify them. But there is a considerable gap between the promise and the actual performance of comparative analysis – with implications for policy making. At this lunchtime seminar, Ted Marmor drew upon his prize winning paper with Richard Freeman and Kieke Okma, "Comparative Perspectives and Policy Learning in the World of Health Care" (Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Vol. 7, No. 4, December 2005) to consider what we can learn from other health care systems and how researchers should undertake comparative analysis. He argued that “misdescription and superficiality, unwarranted inferences, rhetorical distortion, and caricatures are all too common.” However, he believes that is an important role for comparative analysis, for international organisations in facilitating such analysis, and a role for policy makers in using this research in their own policy development. The main role is to identify issues and increase understanding of one’s own health care system, rather than to find a “solution” somewhere else to impose at home.