López, Guillem, Costa-i-Font, Joan and Planas, Ivan (2004) Diversity and regional inequalities: assessing the outcomes of the Spanish 'system of health care services'. Working Papers, 745. Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
The consolidation of a universal health system coupled with a process of regional devolution characterise the institutional reforms of the National Health System (NHS) in Spain in the last two decades. However, scarce empirical evidence has been reported on the effects of both changes in health inputs, outputs and outcomes, both at the country and at the regional level. This paper examines the empirical evidence on regional diversity, efficiency and inequality of these changes in the Spanish NHS using cross-correlation, panel data and expenditure decomposition analysis. Results suggest that besides significant heterogeneity, once we take into account region-specific needs there is evidence of efficiency improvements whilst inequalities in inputs and outcomes, although more ‘visible’, do not appear to have increased in the last decade. Therefore, the devolution process in the Spanish Health System offers an interesting case for the experimentation of health reforms related to regional diversity but compatible with the nature of a public NHS, with no sizeable regional inequalitiest.
|Item Type:||Monograph (Working Paper)|
|Additional Information:||© 2001 The Authors|
|Library of Congress subject classification:||R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine|
|Journal of Economic Literature Classification System:||H - Public Economics > H3 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents > H31 - Household
H - Public Economics > H7 - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I38 - Government Policy; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
|Sets:||Departments > European Institute
Departments > Social Policy
Collections > Economists Online
Research centres and groups > LSE Health
|Date Deposited:||24 Jun 2011 14:05|
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