Private or Public?

Chile is a country where most of the population receives health insurance from the public sector where only about 35% is covered by private insurance. It seems odd that the private health care system (ISAPRES) would receive such a high percentage of the national health care budget when it does not serve a majority of the Chilean population. What is the point in putting so much effort, time, money into something that won’t be used frequently? In a country like Chile that only has a GDP per capita of about 12,000 (USD), funds need to especially be allocated more appropriately in order to help relieve any strain on their economy.

With so many people choosing to use the public sector as opposed to the private because of the high costs of co-payments, this would certainly lead to inefficient spending and wasting of resources. With less people using the private system, those that are using it and plan to will be affected negatively because co-payments will continually rise to help offset the costs of the services and resources that are not being used. If this trend does not change over time, the misallocation of resources should persuade policy makers to address the needs of the people better by making sure that they would be able to purchase private insurance before investing more funds in that system. Somehow, more economic progress would need to occur in order to even give Chileans the option to choose between using public insurance or private insurance. Until this happens I don’t think there is a viable reason to increase funds into the private health care system.