Health expenditure and finance models in Turkey: A comparison with OECD countries

It seems that the health services in Turkey have been reformed via privatization. The provision and financing of healthcare have always been an important issue for politicians. As health expenditures have a significant share in the state budget, profer decisions should be made while financing health services. Therefore, to contribute to the literature and make these decisions, health services spending and the financing models in Turkey are examined, and also, expenditure and financing models of health services of Turkey are compared to the OECD countries and G7 countries that are the members of the OECD. When per capita of total health expenditure data are compared on the basis of the dollar in the OECD countries and Turkey between the years 2000-2019, it is seen that the health service spending of Turkey is lower than most of the OECD countries, and also, it seems to be under the OECD average. The average of the share of total health spending per capita GDP in Turkey for the 19-year period is 4.76%, while the OECD average is 8.57%. The health spending share is allocated to a lesser extent in Turkey in terms of the share in GDP. Turkey adopts the mixed financing model as the health financing model. The result of this research indicates that Turkey's health spending seems to be much lower than the expenditure of the other OECD countries. Keywords: Health Expenditure, Health Care Financing, Financing Models