The Italian health‐care system

George France, Francesco Taroni and Andrea Donatini

Health Economics, 2005, vol. 14, issue S1, S187-S202

Abstract: Italy's national health service is statutorily required to guarantee the uniform provision of comprehensive care throughout the country. However, this is complicated by the fact that, constitutionally, responsibility for healthcare is shared between the central government and the 20 regions. There are large and growing differences in regional health service organisation and provision. Public health‐care expenditure has absorbed a relatively low share of gross domestic product, although in the last 25 years it has consistently exceeded central government forecasts. Changes in payment systems, particularly for hospital care, have helped to encourage organisational appropriateness and may have contributed to containing expenditure. Tax sources used to finance the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale (SSN) have become somewhat more regressive. The limited evidence on vertical equity suggests that the SSN ensures equal access to primary care but lower income groups face barriers to specialist care. The health status of Italians has improved and compares favourably with that in other countries, although regional disparities persist. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (77)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.1035

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:wly:hlthec:v:14:y:2005:i:s1:p:s187-s202

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().