Paper's abstract

Émile Lévy, The Health Economist Confronted to the Distinction Private-Public
In this paper, the author questions the pertinence of distinguishing between private and public in the field of health. If this distinction seems useful at a first level of the system description, one discovers quickly that one must appeal to the logic that govern the functioning of the organisations, to the types of relation (commercial or not) they have with their environment, to their mode of financing and to the modes of control they are subjected to. The constitution of mixed forms, in which one cannot decide if they are private or public, in France and above all outside France (United Kingdom, USA, etc.) could mean if not the decay of the border between public and private but at least the new position of the State concerning the operators in the health field.

Key Words : economy, health, private, public
t. 41, 1997 : p. 387-393

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