Health policy and COVID-19: path dependency and trajectory

Health care reform in Germany: Patchwork change within established governance structures

Azad Singh Bali, Alex Jingwei He and M Ramesh

Policy and Society, 2022, vol. 41, issue 1, 83-95

Abstract: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has tested the mettle of governments across the globe and has thrown entrenched fault lines within health systems into sharper relief. In response to the outbreak of the pandemic, governments introduced a range of measures to meet the growth in demand and bridge gaps in health systems. The objective of this paper is to understand the nature and extent of the changes in health systems triggered by the COVID-19 crisis. The paper examines changes in the role of governments in (1) sector coordination, (2) service provision, (3) financing, (4) payment, and (5) regulations. It outlines broad trends and reforms underway prior to the pandemic and highlights likely trajectories in these aspects in the future. The paper argues that while the pandemic has accelerated changes already underway before the crisis, it has made little headway in clearing the path for other or deeper health policy reforms. The reform window that COVID-19 opened has not been wide enough to overcome the entrenched path dependency and structural interests that characterize the sector.

Keywords: health policy; health systems; COVID-19; policy change; crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/polsoc/puab014 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:41:y:2022:i:1:p:83-95.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Policy and Society is currently edited by Daniel Béland, Giliberto Capano, Michael Howlett and M. Ramesh

More articles in Policy and Society from Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().