Financing Health Care: What Can we Learn from CEE Experience?

NEMEC, Juraj, Stanka SETNIKAR CANKAR, Todorka KOSTADINOVA, Ivan MALÝ and Zuzana KOTHEROVÁ. Financing Health Care: What Can we Learn from CEE Experience? Administrative Culture. 2013, vol. 14, No 2, p. 212-237. ISSN 1736-6070.

Basic information

• Original name: Financing Health Care: What Can we Learn from CEE Experience?
• Authors: NEMEC, Juraj (703 Slovakia, guarantor, belonging to the institution), Stanka SETNIKAR CANKAR (705 Slovenia), Todorka KOSTADINOVA (100 Bulgaria), Ivan MALÝ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution) and Zuzana KOTHEROVÁ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Administrative Culture, 2013, 1736-6070.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 50600 5.6 Political science
• Country of publisher: Estonia
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14560/13:00066514
• Organization unit: Faculty of Economics and Administration
• Keywords in English: health-care; Central and Eastern Europe; reforms; access; health finance
• Tags: Reviewed

Abstract

Our paper is based on four country samples – Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. All these countries are new EU member states, where the (official) goal of the health-finance system is to guarantee universal and equal access to health services. In the first part the country studies describe the evolution of new health-finance systems in selected countries as well as the pros and cons of national solutions. The core part of this paper discusses two important health-financing issues – the decision about how to fund health services and particularly the decision about the relations of public and private funding of health care. We propose two core conclusions: first, because the mode of financing does not have a clear impact on outcomes of the health-care system, the decisions of CEE countries to switch from general taxation to social-insurance systems are based mainly on political rationality; second, introducing pluralistic social health insurance during early phases of transition is too risky.

Links

• GAP403/12/0366, research and development project: Name: Identifikace a evaluace regionálně specifických faktorů úspěšnosti reforem v duchu NPM ? země CEE
• MUNI/A/0786/2012, interní kód MU: Name: Hodnocení kvality veřejných politik v kontextu restriktivních omezení veřejných financí (Acronym: KvaVePol 2)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A