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Out of Pocket Health Expenditures in Turkey in the Aftermath of the Reforms: Impact of Co-payments on Expenditures and Use of Health Services

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  • Burcay Erus

    (Bogaziçi University)

Abstract

In 2002 Turkey started to implement reforms in health care aiming to ease access and increase efficiency. Reforms increased insurance coverage and resulted in higher number of outpatient and inpatient treatments at both public and private hospitals. To reign in consequent increase in health expenditures, a series of co-payments were instituted. Along with that primary care services were reformed through a family-medicine system that provided free access. The aim was to channel patients to primary care and hence cut on costs of secondary care. This work aims to measure the impact of these two measures, introduction of co-payments at secondary care and ease of access to free primary care, on out-of-pocket expenditures and access/use of healthcare services. We find that while contributory payments resulted in higher OOP health expenditures, especially for lower income households, the impact was small and did not hinder access to healthcare services. Indeed, possibly due to easier access to primary care, inability to see a doctor became less prevalent. Adverse effect of the contributory payments have been limited and have largely been countered by the provision of a easily available primary care system.

Suggested Citation

  • Burcay Erus, 2016. "Out of Pocket Health Expenditures in Turkey in the Aftermath of the Reforms: Impact of Co-payments on Expenditures and Use of Health Services," Working Papers 1070, Economic Research Forum, revised 12 Jun 2016.
  • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:1070
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Yardim, Mahmut Saadi & Cilingiroglu, Nesrin & Yardim, Nazan, 2010. "Catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment in Turkey," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 26-33, January.
    2. Shin, Young-Jeon, 2006. "Policy context of the poor progress of the pro-poor policy: A case study on the Medical-Aid policy during Kim Dae-jung's Government (1998-2002) in the Republic of Korea," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(2-3), pages 209-223, October.
    3. Burcay Erus & Nazli Aktakke, 2012. "Impact of healthcare reforms on out-of-pocket health expenditures in Turkey for public insurees," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(3), pages 337-346, June.
    4. Arnab Acharya & Sukumar Vellakkal & Fiona Taylor & Edoardo Masset & Ambika Satija & Margaret Burke & Shah Ebrahim, 2013. "The Impact of Health Insurance Schemes for the Informal Sector in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 236-266, August.
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    Cited by:

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