After the Financial Crisis: Is the Czech Health Care System in Transition?

Abstract

This paper concludes that today the Czech health care financing and delivery systems are under pressure to turn away from intraand inter-generation solidarity principles and transform themselves to a system operating predominantly on a commercial basis. Under the smokescreen of a financial crisis, the current political leadership is preparing for profound transformation of the hospital sector and the public health care insurance system via privatization. The research in progress concentrates on analysis of planned changes by government authorities in the health care delivery and financing systems. Currently in the Czech Republic, the payroll tax-based social health insurance financing system supports defined benefits—all inclusive health care delivery system. In essence, the government plans to shrink the pay-as-you-go, intergeneration and intrageneration solidarity financing system. The government insists that reforms are necessary because the system will inexorably run out of money due to factors beyond government controls. The proposal to change the way health care is financed and delivered rests on the following assertions: