Public vs Private in Universities and Health Systems

Howard Hotson in the LRB argues that the success of world-class private US universities (Harvard etc.) isn't evidence that market tactics would improve UK universities. Although Harvard and the other Ivies do exceptionally well, the US university system as a whole does worse on average than the UK, is far more expensive, and maintains huge inequalities.

A parallel point can be made about markets in healthcare: the US system does exceptionally well at the top end of provision, but does no better than the NHS on average, costs a lot more, and maintains huge inequalities (see references below).

***

Some places to start on markets in healthcare, and especially the NHS:

• Ben Goldacre's summary of NHS reform
• The Commonwealth Fund's comparison of health care systems
• OECD comparative data
• Cost vs outcome analysis of the NHS vs the US health system, based on OECD data: (i) life expectancy; (ii) low infant birth weight
• US healthcare inequalities
• Civitas's summary of recent empirical work on the effects of internal competition in the NHS