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Redistributive effects of Swedish health care finance
Author(s) -
Gerdtham UlfG.,
Sundberg Gun
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
the international journal of health planning and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1099-1751
pISSN - 0749-6753
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-1751(199810/12)13:4<289::aid-hpm524>3.0.co;2-n
Subject(s) - health care , business , economics , political science , economic growth
This paper investigates the redistributive effects of the Swedish health care financing system in 1980 and 1990 for four different financial sources: county council taxes, payroll taxes, direct payments and state grants. The redistributive effects are decomposed into vertical, horizontal and ‘reranking’ segments for each of the four financial sources. The data used are based on probability samples of the Swedish population, from the Level of Living Survey (LNU) from 1981 and 1991. The paper concludes that the Swedish health care financing system is weakly progressive, although direct payments are regressive. There is some horizontal inequity and ‘reranking’, which mainly comes from the county council taxes, since those tax rates vary for each county council. The implication is that, to some extent, people with equal incomes are treated unequally. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.