Healthcare Systems in Austria and the Czech Republic – The Same History, but Some Differences

Abstract

Healthcare systems across countries are constantly undergoing long and complicated developments. Across all European countries, health care is funded by using public and private sources. For this paper, two counties were chosen with the same historical background in the context of health care funding with the following indicators of health care performance: number of physicians, number of hospital beds, life expectancy, prenatal mortality, public expendituress to the health care, private expendituress to the health care, and total expendituress to the health care. The aims of the paper are to define "healthcare system" and to characterize the main specifics of the Bismarck model of healthcare insurance; to analyze and compare the selected indicators of performance of the healthcare systems in Austria and the Czech Republic, and to compare the results of the analysis.