<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Transformation of the health care system was a task faced by all formerly socialist Central and Eastern European countries. The years of changes revealed a large number of problems, including those induced by the limited capacity of governments to formulate and implement health care reforms. The goal of this article is to reflect the Czech situation. We start by summarizing the historical development of the Czech health care system in the context of government capacity for implementing health policy. In the core parts of this article, we highlight the main features of Czech health policy making and implementation and present an in-depth analysis of two selected country-specific issues - a low level of patient co-payments and a pluralistic insurance-based financing of health services.</p></abstract>

Transformation of the health care system was a task faced by all formerly socialist Central and Eastern European countries. The years of changes revealed a large number of problems, including those induced by the limited capacity of governments to formulate and implement health care reforms. The goal of this article is to reflect the Czech situation. We start by summarizing the historical development of the Czech health care system in the context of government capacity for implementing health policy. In the core parts of this article, we highlight the main features of Czech health policy making and implementation and present an in-depth analysis of two selected country-specific issues - a low level of patient co-payments and a pluralistic insurance-based financing of health services.

Health policy in the Czech Republic: General character and selected interesting aspects

Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University, Lipová 41a, 60200 Brno, Czech Republic

Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Central European Journal of Public Policy

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Transformation of the health care system was a task faced by all formerly socialist Central and Eastern European countries. The years of changes revealed a...

Health policy in the Czech Republic: General character and selected interesting aspects

Published Online: Feb 16, 2016

Page range: 102 - 113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cejpp-2016-0005

© 2016

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.