Self-reliance


Citizens seem to have been given more and more responsibilities – as employees, as patients and as consumers, for example. In many areas the government’s role is changing to that of facilitator and regulator. How do citizens manage their new role? Are solidarity and justice in society not at risk?

Solidarity and competition in healthcare: friends or foes?

Conference for scientists, policy makers and healthcare professionals
26 January, The Corpac House, Tilburg


Good, accessible care that is also affordable. Developed countries around the world are striving for this very goal, and struggling with the issues involved. Some countries use competition to increase efficiency and make costs manageable, but this does not necessarily produce the desired result. In the Netherlands, for instance, this approach has not helped to cut costs. Moreover, the possibility that competition might pose a risk to solidarity in healthcare is a real issue in many parts of the world.

This is the subject of the conference Does competition in healthcare harm solidarity? on 26 January. This event is being jointly staged by the Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) and Tranzo (scientific center for care and welfare), which are both affiliated with Tilburg University. International speakers from the healthcare sector and the academic world will be exploring such issues as: What is the optimum level of solidarity? What do we mean by competition? What is the best balance between the two? What rules and institutions would be needed to ensure that competition and solidarity become mutually beneficial? In attempting to answer these questions, speakers will draw on examples from a range of different countries.

Keynote speakers are Wouter Bos, the former Dutch Minister of Finance, now a KPMG consultant on the Public Sector and the Health Service, and Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Professor Carol Propper of the University of Bristol will speak about compatibility between solidarity and competition. Erik Schokkaert (University of Louvain), Richard Cookson (University of York, United Kingdom) and Konstantin Beck (CSS Institute for Empirical Health, Switzerland) will describe the situation in other countries. The implications for policy will be discussed by Misha Mikkers (Dutch Healthcare Authority), Martin McKee (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), and Casper van Ewijk (CPB / Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis). The conference will be chaired by Marcel Canoy, Professor of Health Economics at Tilburg University.

Further details and the full conference program are available at the TiU website.