Differences between health care systems and the single European health care market

The following paper analyses the possibilities of forming a single European health care market. This aim is achieved by studying the impact of the differing organisational features of individual European health care systems on the efficiency of health care provision, by examining the relationship between the inputs used to produce health care services and the population's health status in the analysed countries and by exploring the link between the quantity of health care services and the health status. The authors hypothesise that the efficiency and organisation of health care systems determine the possibilities of forming an efficient single European health care market. The empirical methodology employed in this paper is data envelopment analysis (DEA). The results show that differences between health care systems and in the ownership types of health care providers are not so large as to prevent the formation of a single European health care market. However, the formation of a single European health care market would reveal the characteristics of health care systems in such a way that citizens would be in favour of the public sector in health care and the national health service model. Reprinted by permission of the University of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, Ivana Filipovica 4, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia