Since 2014
The core of the Nordic health care system is not empty
Nordic Journal of Health Economics
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| Title |
The core of the Nordic health care system is not empty
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| Creator |
Lyttkens, Carl Hampus; Department of Economics, Lund university, Sweden
Christiansen, Terkel; University of Southern Denmark Häkkinen, Unto; Centre for Health and Social Economics, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki Kaarboe, Oddvar; University of Oslo Sutton, Matt; University of Manchester Welander, Anna; Department of Economics, Lund university |
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| Subject |
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Nordic health care system, embedded, trust, quality, efficiency, institutions I11, I13, I18, I38 |
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| Description |
The Nordic countries are well-known for their welfare states. A very important feature of the welfare state is that it aims at easy and equal access to adequate health care for the entire population. For many years, the Nordic systems were automatically viewed as very similar, and they were placed in the same group when the OECD classified health care systems around the world. However, close inspection soon reveals that there are important differences between the health care systems of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Consequently, it is perhaps no surprise that the Nordic countries fell into three different categories when the OECD revised its classification a few years ago. In this paper, we revisit this issue and argue that the most important similarity across the Nordic countries is the institutional context in which the health care sector is embedded. Nordic health care exists in a high-trust, high-taxation setting of small open economies. With this background, we find a set of important similarities in the manner in which health care is organized and financed in the Nordic countries. To evaluate the performance of the Nordic health care system, we compare a few health quality indicators in the Nordic countries with those of five non-Nordic similarly small open European economies with the same level of income. Overall, the Nordic countries seem to be performing relatively well. Whether they will continue to do so will depend to a large extent on whether the welfare state will continue to reform itself as it has in the past.Published: April 2016.
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| Publisher |
University of Oslo
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| Date |
2016-04-26
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| Type |
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Peer-reviewed Article |
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| Format |
application/pdf
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| Identifier |
https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/NJHE/article/view/2848
10.5617/njhe.2848 |
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| Source |
Nordic Journal of Health Economics; Vol 4, No 1 (2016): Special issue: Health care the Nordic way; pp. 7-27
1892-9710 1892-9729 |
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| Language |
eng
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| Relation |
https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/NJHE/article/view/2848/2494
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| Rights |
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
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