THE IRISH ‘HEALTH BASKET’: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE. ESRI Research Bulletin 2009/4/4

Smith, Samantha (2009) THE IRISH ‘HEALTH BASKET’: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE. ESRI Research Bulletin 2009/4/4. UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

A recent paper** used what is termed the ‘health basket’ approach to compare publicly funded health care benefits in Ireland with those in other countries. The health basket describes which individuals (“breadth”), are covered by public funding, to what extent (“height”), and for which health care services (“depth”). While many international comparisons focus on the depth dimension, this paper focuses on the proportion of the population covered by publicly funded health benefits (breadth of cover) and the proportion of the cost covered by the public funding (height of the cover). The structure of the Irish health basket is compared with a sample of other countries frequently used as comparators (Australia, Canada, France, the UK and Sweden) and several distinctive features of the Irish system emerge.

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