Economic crisis, health systems and health in Europe: country experience

The financial and economic crisis has had a visible but varied impact on many health systems in Europe, eliciting a wide range of responses from governments faced with increased financial and other pressures. This book maps health system responses by country, providing a detailed analysis of policy changes in nine countries and shorter overviews of policy responses in 47 countries. It draws on a large study involving over one hundred health system experts and academic researchers across Europe.

Focusing on policy responses in three areas – public funding of the health system, health coverage and health service planning, purchasing and delivery – this book gives policymakers, researchers and others valuable, systematic information about national contexts of particular interest to them, ranging from countries operating under the fiscal and structural conditions of international bailout agreements to those that, while less severely affected by the crisis, still have had to operate in a climate of diminished public sector spending since 2008.

Along with a companion volume that analyses the impact of the crisis across countries, this book is part of a wider initiative to monitor the effects of the crisis on health systems and health, to identify those policies most likely to sustain the performance of health systems facing fiscal pressure and to gain insight into the political economy of implementing reforms in a crisis.