The Impact of Having Insurance on Households Healthcare Expenditures in Turkey: An Application Within the Context of the Health Transformation Programme

In healthcare financing, insurance is one of the important mechanism which is described as a risk sharing that based on solidarity in healthcare payments. Insurance that supports the demand for health services through public or market economy and guarantees the flow of funds; although it provides protection from economic burden against uncertain demand, social security insurance leads to lower price elasticity in demand for health services and leads to unnecessary demand. Thus, public health spending increases. Turkey also with an assessment similar, regulations taken to agenda to take control of health expenditures, it has asked for user contributions from individuals under social security. In Turkey, facing a variety of policies to social security and insurance system implemented in 2003 in the Health Transformation Program (HTP) has been implemented and grabbing the increase in health spending has attempted to take control. In this study, their health expenditure of households in Turkey, in other words, determinants of demand of household according to the type of having insurance have been analyzed empirically and the effects of social security and health policies on the health expenditures of households have been examined. In the results of the analysis, although the spending levels of households vary according to the types of insurance they have; It has been determined that the policy change has increased the tendency to expenditures among households in the social security system