IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jes/wpaper/y2014v6i4p75-91.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Aftermath Of The Economic Crisis: Healthcare Systems’ Inequalities In Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Silvia PALASCA

    (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Doctoral School of Economics and Business Administration, Romania)

  • Sebastian ENEA

    (Romanian Academy, Iasi Branch)

Abstract

During an economic downturn the non-productive sectors (education, health, and social services) are the most exposed to sudden policy changes, as a result of austerity measures. This article aims to assess the impact of the late 2000’s crisis on some European countries’ healthcare systems in order to highlight the link between the breakdown of the economic context and the negative outcomes on a social level. In this regard, a panel data analysis was employed, focusing on out-of-pocket health expenses as an estimation of a nation’s wellbeing and healthcare development level. The cross-time results indicated a clear collapse of all national healthcare systems in 2009 while the cross-section effects implied that the twenty three countries could be divided in three groups according to their healthcare policy, especially regarding health insurance. Thus, countries should pay more attention to the private insurances component of the healthcare systems as the others are defenseless against business cycle fluctuations.

Suggested Citation

  • Silvia PALASCA & Sebastian ENEA, 2014. "The Aftermath Of The Economic Crisis: Healthcare Systems’ Inequalities In Europe," CES Working Papers, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 6(4), pages 75-91, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:jes:wpaper:y:2014:v:6:i:4:p:75-91
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ceswp.uaic.ro/articles/CESWP2014_VI4_PAL.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cavagnero, Eleonora & Bilger, Marcel, 2010. "Equity during an economic crisis: Financing of the Argentine health system," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 479-488, July.
    2. Cutler, David M. & Knaul, Felicia & Lozano, Rafael & Mendez, Oscar & Zurita, Beatriz, 2002. "Financial crisis, health outcomes and ageing: Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 279-303, May.
    3. Oecd, 2004. "Private Health Insurance in OECD Countries: The Benefits and Costs for Individuals and Health Systems," Financial Market Trends, OECD Publishing, vol. 2004(2), pages 125-197.
    4. Belli, Paolo & Gotsadze, George & Shahriari, Helen, 2004. "Out-of-pocket and informal payments in health sector: evidence from Georgia," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 109-123, October.
    5. Mikael Svensson, 2010. "Economic upturns are good for your heart but watch out for accidents: a study on Swedish regional data 1976-2005," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(5), pages 615-625.
    6. O'Donnell, Owen & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Rannan-Eliya, Ravi P. & Somanathan, Aparnaa & Adhikari, Shiva Raj & Akkazieva, Baktygul & Harbianto, Deni & Garg, Charu C. & Hanvoravongchai, Piya & Herrin, Ale, 2008. "Who pays for health care in Asia?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 460-475, March.
    7. de Belvis, Antonio Giulio & Ferrè, Francesca & Specchia, Maria Lucia & Valerio, Luca & Fattore, Giovanni & Ricciardi, Walter, 2012. "The financial crisis in Italy: Implications for the healthcare sector," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 10-16.
    8. Pietro Folino-Gallo & Simona Montilla & Mario Bruzzone & Nello Martini, 2008. "Pricing and reimbursement of pharmaceuticals in Italy," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 9(3), pages 305-310, August.
    9. Francesca Colombo & Nicole Tapay, 2004. "Private Health Insurance in OECD Countries: The Benefits and Costs for Individuals and Health Systems," OECD Health Working Papers 15, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grigorakis, Nikolaos & Floros, Christos & Tsangari, Haritini & Tsoukatos, Evangelos, 2018. "Macroeconomic and financing determinants of out of pocket payments in health care: Evidence from selected OECD countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1290-1312.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Katharina Hauck & Xiaohui Zhang, 2016. "Heterogeneity in the Effect of Common Shocks on Healthcare Expenditure Growth," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(9), pages 1090-1103, September.
    2. Nikolaos Grigorakis & Christos Floros & Haritini Tsangari & Evangelos Tsoukatos, 2017. "Combined social and private health insurance versus catastrophic out of pocket payments for private hospital care in Greece," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 261-287, September.
    3. Nemanja Rancic & Mihajlo (Michael) Jakovljevic, 2016. "Long Term Health Spending Alongside Population Aging in N-11 Emerging Nations," Eastern European Business and Economics Journal, Eastern European Business and Economics Studies Centre, vol. 2(1), pages 2-26.
    4. Boone, Jan, 2015. "Basic versus supplementary health insurance: Moral hazard and adverse selection," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 50-58.
    5. Sebastian Panthöfer, 2016. "Risk Selection under Public Health Insurance with Opt‐Out," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(9), pages 1163-1181, September.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10140 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Reona Hagiwara, 2022. "Welfare Effects of Health Insurance Reform: The Role of Elastic Medical Demand," IMES Discussion Paper Series 22-E-05, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    8. Hsu, Minchung & Lee, Junsang, 2013. "The Provision Of Public Universal Health Insurance: Impacts On Private Insurance, Asset Holdings, And Welfare," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(6), pages 1252-1280, September.
    9. Marenzi, Anna & Rizzi, Dino & Zanette, Michele, 2021. "Incentives for voluntary health insurance in a national health system: Evidence from Italy," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(6), pages 685-692.
    10. Kumpmann, Ingmar, 2009. "Monopolistic Competition and Costs in the Health Care Sector," IWH Discussion Papers 17/2009, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    11. Pedersen, Kjeld Møller, 2011. "Sickness absence and voluntary employer paid health insurance," DaCHE discussion papers 2011:4, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    12. Shin, Jaeun, 2012. "Private health insurance in South Korea: An international comparison," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 76-85.
    13. Andrea M. Leiter & Engelbert Theurl, 2021. "Determinants of prepaid systems of healthcare financing: a worldwide country-level perspective," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 317-344, September.
    14. Sebastian Gechert, 2010. "Supplementary Private Health Insurance in Selected Countries: Lessons for EU Governments?," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 56(3), pages 444-464, September.
    15. Denise Doiron & Nathan Kettlewell, 2020. "Family formation and the demand for health insurance," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(4), pages 523-533, April.
    16. Randall Ellis & Elizabeth Savage, 2008. "Run for cover now or later? The impact of premiums, threats and deadlines on private health insurance in Australia," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 257-277, December.
    17. Eriksen, Steffen & Wiese, Rasmus, 2019. "Policy induced increases in private healthcare financing provide short-term relief of total healthcare expenditure growth: Evidence from OECD countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 71-82.
    18. Kiil, Astrid, 2012. "What characterises the privately insured in universal health care systems? A review of the empirical evidence," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 60-75.
    19. Jonas Pendzialek & Dusan Simic & Stephanie Stock, 2016. "Differences in price elasticities of demand for health insurance: a systematic review," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 17(1), pages 5-21, January.
    20. Minchung Hsu & Tomoaki Yamada, 2019. "Population Aging, Health Care, and Fiscal Policy Reform: The Challenges for Japan," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(2), pages 547-577, April.
    21. Purcel, Alexandra-Anca & Dragos, Cristian Mihai & Mare, Codruța & Dragos, Simona Laura, 2023. "Voluntary health insurance and out-of-pocket payments in European OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic crisis; healthcare; out-of-pocket payments; social inequalities; panel data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jes:wpaper:y:2014:v:6:i:4:p:75-91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alupului Ciprian (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csjesro.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.