Health Policy in Asia: A Policy Design Approach

The book assesses the policy actions of select Asian governments (China, India, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand) to address critical health system functions from a policy design perspective. The findings show that all governments in the region have made tremendous strides in focussing their attention on the core issues and, especially, the interactions among them. However, there is still insufficient appreciation of the usefulness of public hospitals and their efficient management. Similarly, some governments have not made sufficient efforts to establish an effective regulatory framework which is especially vital in systems with a large share of private providers and payers. A well-run public hospital system and an effective framework for regulating private providers are essential tools to support the governance, financing, and payment reforms underway in the six health systems studied in this book.

M. Ramesh is UNESCO Chair on Social Policy Design in Asia at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he was the Founding Head of the Department of Asian and Policy Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and Chair of the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Specialising in public policy and governance in Asia with a particular focus on social policy, Ramesh has authored and edited many books. His widely used textbook Studying Public Policy has been translated into several languages. He is the Editor of the journals Policy and Society and Policy Design and Practice.

Azad Bali in Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and holds a joint appointment with the School of Politics & International Relations and the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (ANU). His research interests straddle comparative public policy and health policy in Asia. Some of this research research has been published in leading journals including Policy Sciences, Policy & Society, Public Policy and Administration, Social Policy & Administration among others. Prior to the ANU, Bali held a Melbourne Early Career Fellowship at the University of Melbourne and was Research Fellow at Murdoch University.