{"title":"The human side of austerity: health spending and outcomes during the Greek crisis","authors":"Roberto Perotti","doi":"10.1093/epolic/eiab001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"SUMMARY The Greek crisis was the deepest in post-war Europe. Public spending on health, that had grown extremely fast in the first decade of the 2000s, was cut by almost 40% between 2010 and 2016, also an unparalleled figure in post-war Europe. Although some of the cuts were mitigated by a system of clawback on the private pharmaceutical industry and by increased household out of pocket expenditure, the provision of health services was also greatly impacted by the spread of long-term unemployment, which in the employment-based Greek system left possibly millions of individuals without access to health services, until universal coverage was effectively restored in 2016. In this paper I aim at establishing the basic facts about the health crisis. Although care must be exercised in not presenting a simplistic, uniformly bleak picture, I show that several indicators point to a substantial deterioration in the health outcomes of the Greek population during the critical years of loss of universal coverage until 2016, in particular for the more vulnerable sectors of the population.","PeriodicalId":47772,"journal":{"name":"Economic Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic Policy","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/epolic/eiab001","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
SUMMARY The Greek crisis was the deepest in post-war Europe. Public spending on health, that had grown extremely fast in the first decade of the 2000s, was cut by almost 40% between 2010 and 2016, also an unparalleled figure in post-war Europe. Although some of the cuts were mitigated by a system of clawback on the private pharmaceutical industry and by increased household out of pocket expenditure, the provision of health services was also greatly impacted by the spread of long-term unemployment, which in the employment-based Greek system left possibly millions of individuals without access to health services, until universal coverage was effectively restored in 2016. In this paper I aim at establishing the basic facts about the health crisis. Although care must be exercised in not presenting a simplistic, uniformly bleak picture, I show that several indicators point to a substantial deterioration in the health outcomes of the Greek population during the critical years of loss of universal coverage until 2016, in particular for the more vulnerable sectors of the population.
期刊介绍:
Economic Policy provides timely and authoritative analyses of the choices confronting policymakers. The subject matter ranges from the study of how individual markets can and should work to the broadest interactions in the world economy. Economic Policy features: Analysis of key issues as they emerge Views of top international economists Frontier thinking without technical jargon Wide-reaching coverage of worldwide policy debate