Health Care System between the State and the Market - The Case of Serbia

Abstract

Serbia’s health care sector passed a long way from embracing state to market oriented values. During the first transition phase of the 1990s, health care reforms were rather provisional and forced by unfavorable trends in the society, while in the second transition decade more comprehensive, yet incomplete reforms, have been designed. The trajectory of main developments in the sectoral reforms clearly reveals a transformation of the national health care system from the state through quasi-state and finally mixed state-market health care schemes. Straightforward comparisons of access, quality and sustainability of health care in the past and in the present are hard to be made. However, the current reform outcomes reveal compromised accessibility, quality and sustainability of health care services. Those unresolved challenges have created room for widespread corrupt practices. Currently their main source seem to be unclear relations between the public and the private health care sectors.