Reform and resilience: the impact of the financial crisis on access to healthcare

The Public Health Research Group and the Center for Policy Studies

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Reform and resilience:

the impact of the financial crisis on access to healthcare

Ricardo Rodrigues
Eszter Zólyomi

European Center for Social Welfare Research and Policy, Vienna

In the wake of the financial crisis, a number of countries have had to implement cost-saving measures in their healthcare systems as part of budget – balancing measures agreed with the Troika (European Commission, ECB and IMF), or to avoid having to request financial aid. Together with falling income experienced by patients, these reforms may have had an impact on access to healthcare, at least for some groups of the population.

Using EU-SILC micro-data we aim to explore if there has been an increase in unmet needs for medical treatment due to affordability and unavailability of services (enforced unmet needs) and to identify vulnerable social groups. For the purpose of this analysis we selected EU countries which have been most affected by the crisis, namely, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia and Portugal, and use Sweden, a country not so affected by the crisis, as a control. We employ multivariate analysis to study changes in the probability of observing enforced unmet needs before and after the crisis for different groups (e.g. across the income distribution) within countries and discuss the findings in the context of the policy measures introduced.