Policy evaluation reveals that public deliberation workshops fail to inform technical healthcare decisions, indicating that mini-publics require critical scrutiny before widespread use.
Key Points
Evaluate the utility, informativeness, and deliberative quality of mini-publics used to inform health policy decisions within a national health insurance system.
Analyzed the 5th and 10th public deliberation workshops out of 16 experimental workshops conducted by the Korean National Health Insurance System since 2012.
Assessed workshop proceedings and outcomes against normative standards of public deliberation, including fairness, reasonableness, and equal participation.
Workshops yielded outcomes deemed insufficient to provide useful or actionable guidance for technically complex health policy questions.
Deliberative sessions produced substantial disagreements among participants and failed to uphold core deliberative ideals, including equal participation, reasonableness, and fairness relative to the high operational costs.