Intermunicipal health care consortia in Brazil: strategic behavior, incentives and sustainability
✍ Scribed by Luciana Teixeira; Mauricio Bugarin; Maria Cristina Dourado
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2006
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 224 KB
- Volume
- 21
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0749-6753
- DOI
- 10.1002/hpm.860
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This article studies strategic behavior in municipal health care consortia where neighboring municipalities form a partnership to supply high-complexity health care. Each municipality partially funds the organization. Depending on the partnership contract, a free rider problem may jeopardize the organization. A municipality will default its payments if it can still benefit from the services, especially when political pressures for competing expenditure arise. The main result is that the partnership sustainability depends on punishment mechanisms to a defaulting member, the gains from joint provision of services and the overall economic environment. Possible solutions to the incentive problem are discussed.