Abstract
While the Ministry of Health in Turkey continues to claim success and improvement in the health of its people,1Atun R Aydın S Chakraborty S et al.Universal health coverage in Turkey: enhancement of equity.Lancet. 2013; 382: 65-99Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (218) Google Scholar an important issue has been overlooked: are the data reliable? Health data are no longer collected and recorded within the country. Family physicians are responsible for treating patients and not for collecting data. Reliable data are crucial to understand the level of health care delivered, but results announced by the Ministry of Health are based on unrealistic outstanding data.2Baris E Mollahaliloglu S Aydin S Healthcare in Turkey: from laggard to leader.BMJ. 2011; 342: c7456Crossref PubMed Scopus (48) Google Scholar, 3Aksakoglu G Can you beat that?.BMJ. 2011; (published online May 4.) (accessed Dec 10, 2013).http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7456?tab=responsesGoogle Scholar Turkey used to have a remarkable social health system that covered the entire population and gave all people access to health care at no cost. The recording system was almost perfect, from follow-up of 15–49-year-old females for detection of pregnancy to mortality data. With the erosion of the social health system, the present situation is in turmoil: only treatment with payment is available, while preventive and rehabilitative medicine are not provided. The Ministry of Health's data are not reliable in view of its previous misleading presentations;2Baris E Mollahaliloglu S Aydin S Healthcare in Turkey: from laggard to leader.BMJ. 2011; 342: c7456Crossref PubMed Scopus (48) Google Scholar data are engineered to make the health situation look better than it really is. I declare that I have no conflicts of interest. Universal health coverage in Turkey: enhancement of equityTurkey has successfully introduced health system changes and provided its citizens with the right to health to achieve universal health coverage, which helped to address inequities in financing, health service access, and health outcomes. We trace the trajectory of health system reforms in Turkey, with a particular emphasis on 2003–13, which coincides with the Health Transformation Program (HTP). The HTP rapidly expanded health insurance coverage and access to health-care services for all citizens, especially the poorest population groups, to achieve universal health coverage. Full-Text PDF Health-care reform in Turkey: far from perfect – Authors' replyWe are delighted with the discussion generated by our report Universal health coverage in Turkey: enhancement of equity.1 Full-Text PDF
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