Private Hospitals for the Public Good Introduction Uganda National Association of Private Hospitals (UNAPH) is undertaking initiatives to positively re-position the private hospital sector in relation to stakeholder and public awareness. Health is both a public good and to a considerable extent a private good. Purchasers of health benefit directly from what they pay for, making it a private good. Health care is treated as a public good because it is not an ordinary commodity that works efficiently in a free market. For economists, a public good is not simply something that is “good for the public”; it is something that benefits many people, including those who do not pay for it. When someone is sick they are not necessarily worried about price, the price they are willing to pay may become near limitless because the alternate could be death. Healthcare in terms of supply and demand does not fit efficiently into a free market and externalities provided by healthy citize...