Analysis of Experts' Views on Health Care: A Survey

Abstract

Either ways of understanding health care as a commodity or public work are at opposite ends of health care spectrum. These two rival conceptions reflected by viewpoint(ideology) would lead to different directions in policy-making for health care reform. The purpose of this study is to access the value differences of experts` policy views about health care issues by analyzing the extent of consensus among experts in the field of health care. Using primary data obtained through a mail survey of 558 experts in the field of health care, we analyzed the differences of experts` opinions about characteristics of health care market, policy issues and values(ideology). The study represents from 50-50 split analysis, entropy index, and factor analysis that the wide spread disagreements over health policy, which is a major barriers to effective policy-making, could be caused by the ideological perception differences among experts. This implies that, if values play an important role in policy-making, we should identify the differences in value and seek ways to balance among the diverse values such as efficiency, equity, freedom, and security. For this, the policy issues debated on differences in values should be reconciled for narrowing gaps of experts` perceptions through various ways.