Healthcare in the Light of the Concept of Welfare State Regimes – Comparative Analysis of EU Member States

This paper addresses issues related to health care in the context of the debate about the typology of welfare state regimes and comparative studies conducted in reference to the debate. Particular attention has been paid to the phenomenon of decommodification as one of the key dimensions that define welfare regimes identified in the literature associated with this debate. The study presents a health decommodification index, on the basis of which an attempt has been made to assess the decommodification potential of health care, taking into account the situation in the 28 EU Member States in 2012. The identification of a widely understood accessibility of publicly funded health care as a basic measure for assessing the decommodifying features of health programs is an important result of the empirical analysis. The study has also confirmed the views expressed in the © Copyright Institute of Economic Research Date of submission: April 3, 2015; date of acceptance: January 8, 2016 ∗ Contact: [email protected], Cracow University of Economics, ul. Rakowicka 27, 31-510 Kraków, Poland ** The publication was financed from funds allocated to the Department of Economics and International Relations, University of Economics in Cracow, in the framework of the grants for the maintenance of research capacity. 188 Dorota Kawiorska literature about the existence of practical obstacles standing in the way of developing a universal typology of welfare states.