{"id":987521008,"date":"2021-11-03T02:58:51","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T01:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/news\/how-far-is-estonia-from-universal-health-coverage-a-research-paper\/"},"modified":"2023-03-02T10:12:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T09:12:20","slug":"how-far-is-estonia-from-universal-health-coverage-a-research-paper","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/news\/how-far-is-estonia-from-universal-health-coverage-a-research-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"How Far is Estonia from Universal Health Coverage? A research paper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A reseach publication by Polish authors&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/?term=Tambor%20M%5BAuthor%5D&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=33546157\">Marzena Tambor<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/?term=Klich%20J%5BAuthor%5D&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=33546157\">Jacek Klich<\/a>, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/?term=Domaga%26%23x00142%3Ba%20A%5BAuthor%5D&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=33546157\">Alicja Domaga\u0142a<\/a>&nbsp;titled<strong>&nbsp;&#8220;Financing Healthcare in Central and Eastern European Countries: How Far Are We from Universal Health Coverage?<\/strong>&#8221; explores how&nbsp;healthcare systems of Central and Eastern European countries underwent enormous transformation, resulting in departure from publicly financed healthcare after the fall of communism.<\/p>\n<p>This had significant adverse effects on equity in healthcare, which are still evident, concluded authors.<\/p>\n<p>In this paper, authors (health economists and health policy analysts) analyzed the role of government and households in financing healthcare in eight countries (EU-8):&nbsp;<strong>Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A desk research method was applied to collect&nbsp;<strong>quantitative data on healthcare expenditures<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>qualitative data on gaps in universal health coverage.&nbsp;<\/strong>&nbsp;A linear regression analysis was used to analyze a trend in health expenditure over the years 2000\u20132018.<\/p>\n<p>Results indicate that a&nbsp;<strong>high reliance on out-of-pocket payments&nbsp;<\/strong>persists in many EU-8 countries, and only a few countries have shown a significant downward trend over time.<\/p>\n<p>The gaps in universal coverage in the EU-8 countries are due to&nbsp;<strong>explicit rationing<\/strong>&nbsp;(a limited benefit package, patient cost sharing) and&nbsp;<strong>implicit mechanisms<\/strong>&nbsp;(wait times).<\/p>\n<p>Estonia&#8217;s numbers in brief are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>life expectancy at birth is 78.5 years (2018),<\/li>\n<li>health expenditure as % of GDP is 6.66% (2018),<\/li>\n<li>domestic general government health expenditure as % of general government expenditure is&nbsp;12.54% (2018),<\/li>\n<li>government\/compulsory scheme expenditure as % of current health expenditure is&nbsp;73.67% (2018),<\/li>\n<li>out-of-pocket health expenditure as % of current health expenditure is&nbsp;24.56% (2018), up from 20.37% in 2000,<\/li>\n<li>% of Population Covered based on&nbsp;participation in<br \/>\n\tinsurance scheme is 94\u201395% (people not covered are individuals not in regular employment, people working abroad or with<br \/>\n\tnonstandard employment).&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In terms of out-of-pocket payments, households in Estonia mostly contribute to financing&nbsp;<strong>dental care&nbsp;<\/strong>(over 70%),&nbsp;<strong>medical products&nbsp;<\/strong>and therapeutic appliances (over 65%),<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>medicines&nbsp;<\/strong>(over 48%), as well as&nbsp;<strong>specialized outpatient curative care<\/strong>&nbsp;(around 35%)<strong>.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is suggested that there is a<strong>&nbsp;need to increase the role of public financing&nbsp;<\/strong>in Central and Eastern European countries through budget prioritization, reducing patient co-payments for medical products and medicines, and extending the benefit package for these goods, as well as improving the quality of care.<\/p>\n<p>Source:&nbsp;https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC7913209\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A reseach publication by Polish authors&nbsp;Marzena Tambor,&nbsp;Jacek Klich, and&nbsp;Alicja Domaga\u0142a&nbsp;titled&nbsp;&#8220;Financing Healthcare in Central and Eastern European Countries: How Far Are We from Universal Health Coverage?&#8221; explores how&nbsp;healthcare systems of Central and Eastern European countries underwent enormous transformation, resulting in departure from publicly financed healthcare after the fall of communism. This had significant adverse effects on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":987529777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[],"tags":[118,131],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/987521008"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=987521008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/987521008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/987529777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987521008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987521008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p4h.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987521008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}