General taxes or insurance premiums: a comparison of funding sources for public health care in OECD countries

Abstract

The subject of the study is a comparison of funding sources for public health care in OECD countries. The authors consider in detail the sources of financial support for the implementation of state guarantees for the provision of free medical care to citizens: transfers from state internal revenues (primarily general taxes: mandatory payments that do not have a target link) and insurance premiums (mandatory payments with a specific target link). The authors grouped the OECD countries depending on the share of sources of financial support for the implementation of state guarantees for the provision of free medical care to citizens. Particular attention is paid to the advantages and disadvantages of insurance and budgetary financial mechanisms for financial support for the implementation of state guarantees for the provision of free medical care. The main conclusions based on the results of the study are as follows: in the modern world, issues of improving the healthcare system as one of the key factors in improving the quality of life of citizens are being actively raised; no matter how actively the budgetary financial mechanism is currently used in the country, its use by public authorities in OECD countries is constantly increasing; the use of the budgetary financial mechanism, despite the existing shortcomings, has a number of advantages compared to the insurance one (primarily, due to the smaller direct impact during periods of reduction in the number of employees and wages, as well as economies of scale in the administration of revenues in the form of general taxes compared to insurance contributions). The results obtained can be used in the practical activities of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Government of Russia, the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund, as well as public authorities from other countries when modernizing the state policy in the field of healthcare.