Effect of the health and health expenditure on economy: Turkish health sector and expenditures for health

ABSTRACTEFFECT OF THE HEALTH AND HEALTH EXPENDITURE ON ECONOMY,TURKISH HEALTH SECTOR AND EXPENDITURES FOR HEALTHCemil Serhat AKINMaster Thesis, Department of EconomicsSupervisor: Yrd. Doç Dr. Neşe ALGANApril 2007, 117 PageThis research provides general information about the health care concept and thehealth care services in addition to some explanations on the health economy, which graduallybecomes prominent in developed countries of today. The research also addresses the relationbetween health expenditures and economic growth. The research uses ?Gross NationalProduct per capita?, ?Child-Infant Mortality Rate?, ?Life Expectancy at Birth and ?GrossMortality Rate? as economic and basic health indicators. In this framework, Turkey?s GrossNational Product per capita in 1994-2004 and the changes in Turkey?s basic health indicatorsare evaluated together.Determining the structure of health expenditures and identifying the factors thatinfluence such expenditures are vitally important in terms of improvement of healthindicators. For the health systems are determinant factors in a country?s health structure, theresearch first provides information on Turkey?s health care system and then presents the totalhealth expenditures realized within the system. When the structure of Turkey?s healthexpenditure is examined, it is observed that the expenditures for drugs have the largest sharein realized expenditures; therefore, the research discusses the reasons behind the drugexpenditures in the light of the accessed data. The research also examines the social securityinstitutions that account for major portion of the health and drug expenditures in Turkey andpresents comprehensive data sets covering the health and drug expenditures between thedatum years 1998-2005. Furthermore, the research also examines the health and drugexpenditures of OECD countries, correlates such data with Gross National Product of thesecountries, and compares them with the health expenditures in Turkey.Key Words: Health, Per Capita Income, Health Expenditure, Development, PharmaceuticalExpenditure