Jason Shafrin
This is a question that can be answered empirically but doing so is challenging. While cross-country comparisons are feasible for comparing public and private health care provisions, often there are many other differences between health care systems across country. Within any given country, there is significant selection bias in terms of who receives public vs. private care. Moreover, most research focuses on public vs. private financing of health care (e.g., Medicare Advantage vs. Medicare FFS), but less so whether the providers are public employees or not.
To answer this question, a paper by Frakes, Gruber, and Justicz (2023) examines data on obstetrical care within the Military Health System (MHS) using Military Health System Data Repository data. The authors summarize MHS as follows: …