To Make or to Buy Long-term Care? Part I: Learning from Theory (original) (raw)

The past decades have witnessed an increased reliance on market mechanisms for the delivery of public services, among these long-term care services. This development coincided with a time of welfare retrenchment and calls for more efficiency. The shift towards market mechanisms can be understood in light of the relevance that several streams of thought gained in mainstream economics during the 1980s, namely ‘government failure’ and New Public Management. The explanations for the introduction of market mechanisms for the delivery of welfare included also increased consumerist values, erosion of trust in professionals, louder clamour for the empowerment of users, and changes in prevailing ideas about the limits and appropriate size of the state. Nowadays, different types of market mechanisms are a staple of welfare provision in many European countries. Against this backdrop this Policy Brief is the first part of a trilogy dedicated to the reliance on markets for the delivery of long-t...