15.07.2011

The Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Bulgaria has just released its bulletin: "Good practices in the sphere of forecasting and modeling of the public health care expenditure". The main goal of the Policy Insight is to review the good practices in the sphere of forecasting and modeling of the public health care expenditure in selected countries from the European Union (EU).

In the first part of the analysis, the main factors that are influencing the public healthcare expenditure are introduced. In the second part, the methods for motivated assessment of the public health care expenditure are reviewed, where special attention is paid to cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses. The third part encompasses the methods for forecasting the public healthcare expenditure, where emphasis is laid on the time series methods, macrosimulation methods and microsimulation methods. The implemented models in Switzerland, Great Britain and the Netherlands are analyzed, as well as the models that are used by the European Policy Commission amd the International Labour Organization (ILO). In conclusion, a proposal is made for the implementation of the ILO model in Bulgaria.

The main findings of the Insight are:

• The factors, that are influencing the public health care expenditure should be modeled and examined through simulation scenarios, which should be connected to dynamic technologies and innovations, demographic trends, economic growth, labour market and health status of the population.
• The skyrocketing health expenditure, define the need of implementing and designing policies on national level, concerning the cost-containment, as well as designing methods for assessment of the relative cost efficiency
• The forecasting models, based on the health care status are better and more credible than the methodologies that include exclusively demographic factors.
• Due to the fact, that the health care accounts are introduced to Bulgaria, and with respect to the available information, the ILO model appears to be an optimal solution for forecasting the public health care expenditure.

For a full text version of the Policy Insight (at present available only in Bulgarian), please click here.

In case of any follow-up questions, please contact Mr. Yosif Yosifov at [email protected].