Overall, the health of the Irish population has improved substantially during recent decades and is quite good compared …. Population ageing is exacerbating spending pressures. In addition, the health sector is dealing with past underspending … health areas is set to support more decentralised decision-making, but information systems to track spending and reform …

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses … potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector … for both financing and delivery of health care. The public sector plays a not-insignificant role, providing coverage for …

Overall, health outcomes in China have improved tremendously over the past three decades, especially thanks to the … owing to changes in life styles and deteriorating environmental conditions. Supply of health care is overwhelmingly provided … basic health care by 2020. They involve investment in medical infrastructure, generalising coverage, more focus on …

One area where spending discipline will become increasingly important in Hungary is health care. This paper describes … the structure of the health care system, highlights outstanding weaknesses and considers ways to make financing more … stable and sustainable. The slow progress in modernising the health care system is reflected in the low efficiency of …

This paper presents a set of indicators to assess health care system performance. It also presents new comparative data … on health care policies and institutions for OECD countries. This set of indicators allows the empirical characterisation … of health care systems and the identification of groups of countries sharing similar health institutions. It also helps …

This paper reviews the performance of Polish health care system from an economic perspective. High on the reform agenda … of the government for several years, a new national health insurance system entered into force on 1 January 1999. This … further improvement of the system, including ways of enforcing harder budget constraints on health funds and better defining …

Health outcomes and the quality of health care in Iceland are very good by international comparison, while income …-related health inequality appears to be smaller than in most other countries. However, the health-care system is costly and …, according to OECD estimates, public expenditure on health and long-term care could reach 15% of GDP by 2050 if no restraining …

An ambitious reform to increase efficiency of the Portuguese health care system was launched in 2002. In contrast to … health sector, making changes essentially irreversible. The reform has two main aims: to deliver better-quality public health … services than at present but at no higher cost; and to reduce the underlying growth rate of public health-care spending over …

This paper examines the Norwegian health care system from an economic perspective. While acknowledging the excellent … quality of services delivered by the Norwegian health care system, it identifies a number of problem areas, in particular: i … health care expenditure (which cannot be fully explained by demographic factors); and iii) the risks to cost control …