ROMANIA IN FRONT OF A NEW EUROPEAN CHALLENGE: THE FINANCING OF HEALTH SYSTEMS

The Global Organization of Health defines the health system as „the totality of the organizations,institutions and resources consecrated to the improvement of health.” The financing of a health system refers to the way in which the funds necessary for the development of the activity in the sanitary sector are collected and also to the modality in which these funds are allocated and then used. The chosen financing modality, combined with the type of organization of the sanitary system determines who has access to the health care, the cost of this care, the productive efficiency and not least the quality of the offered services. All these intermediary results determine in their turn the final results of any health system: the health condition of the population, the financial protection against the risks and not least the degree of satisfaction of the consumers of services. The paper proposes a compared analyze of the various financing mechanisms of health systems in Europe, to conclude on the advantages and disadvantages of each system. Concerning our country, we search the answer to the question: “Is a supplementary health insurance viable in Romania and would it reduce the costs of the patients?