Little health economics research has been done in developing countries, reflecting the fact that 10% of the world's health research is devoted to 90% of the world's health problems. Healthcare in developing countries relies more on market mechanisms than healthcare in developed countries. From a health economist's point of view, there are reasons to suspect that healthcare systems in many developing countries are both inefficient and inequitable. The public healthcare model in Europe offers better solutions to the problems in developing countries than the private health care model in the USA. In this article aspects of the health economics situation in Vietnam are discussed and some important health economics research questions identified.