The determinants of healthcare expenditure in Turkey

Health care expenditure has a highly increasing trend, distinguished through the effects of many different factors including changes in the income and population structure, technological progress and growing great expectations in the healthcare market, a field where states are in the process of reforming for a better health status or this process is debated. Increased health care expenditure, regardless of the development level of countries, also imposes a burden on the public budget. Health care expenditure in Turkey is no longer isolated from this global trend. These developments necessitate analysing the factors which determine health care expenditure in terms of Turkey. This study through the method of time-series analysis, within the scope of economic and demographic factors accepted as a sort of key factor in health care expenditure analysis examines the determinants of health care expenditure for Turkey with the data obtained from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) between 1979 and 2016. Empirical results with the analysed data have acutely clarified the changes in health care expenditure per person and provided a great contribution to the results evaluated within the theoretical framework relating to the income elasticity of the health care in terms of Turkey.