Is Health Care a Public Value?

ABSTRACT

Achieving high value for each patient is a core tenet within the field of health care, yet health care remains a divisive issue for some countries. The importance of value within health care often focuses on the individual patient with less emphasis on health care as a public value. This research explores different forms of health care systems and attempts to understand who believes access to health care is a public value. Using a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. citizens, this study presents statistically significant empirical evidence regarding values that predict the probability of individuals within age-based cohorts identifying access to health care as a public value. A theory of public values dissonance is also developed due to the incongruent beliefs that individuals possess regarding health care for themselves compared to the right of health care for all.

KEYWORDS:

• Public values
• health care
• citizens
• MTurk
• public values dissonance