Health Policy in Asia

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.

• 1. Introduction: health policy design; 2. The economic and social context of health care in Asia; 3. China: re-building the system; 4. India: reforming a private and fragmented health system; 5. South Korea: universal health care in the context of private provision; 6. Thailand: universal health care under Government Stewardship; 7. Hong Kong: keeping health care simple; 8. Singapore: synergising the state and market in health care; 9. Conclusion: health policy design in Asia; References; Index.

'As the countries of Asia have been confronting the COVID pandemic, it is all the more important to understand their health policies, and the ways in which health services are delivered to the public. This book does an admirable job of first developing a design approach to health policy, then applying it to six major healthcare systems in the region. The book also demonstrates the utility of well-informed comparative policy analysis. This is a major contribution to health policy studies, but also to public policy studies.' B. Guy Peters, Maurice Falk Professor of American Government, University of Pittsburgh