János Kornai - Böcker

Reform of the welfare sector is an important yet difficult challenge for all countries in transition from socialist central planning to market-oriented democracies. Here a scholar of the economics of socialism and post-socialist transition and a health economist take on this challenge. This 2001 book offers health sector reform recommendations for ten countries of Eastern Europe, drawn consistently from a set of explicit guiding principles. After discussing sector-specific characteristics, lessons of international experience, and the main set of initial conditions, the authors advocate reforms based on organized public financing for basic care, private financing for supplementary care, pluralistic delivery of services, and managed competition. Policymakers need to achieve a balance, both assuring social solidarity through universal access to basic health services and expanding individual choice and responsibility through voluntary supplemental insurance. The authors also consider the problems that undermine effectiveness of market-based competition in the health sector.

Countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are entering the second decade of political transformation and economic reform. The first decade involved macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, and development of the basic institutional infrastructure of a market economy. The new policy challenges center on the nature of the social contract between citizens and their governments. These challenges include identifying the appropriate boundaries between the obligations of the public sector and the responsibilities of individual citizens, the range of public goods the government should supply, and who should pay for and benefit from their provision. The essays in this volume, first published in 2001, focus on two interrelated issues: the making of fiscal policy and the provision of citizens' welfare, particularly regarding pensions and health care. The essays emphasize that there is no single model of a market economy; rather, governments and publics face a range of options for restructuring the socialist welfare state.

Countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are entering the second decade of political transformation and economic reform. The first decade involved macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, and development of the basic institutional infrastructure of a market economy. The new policy challenges center on the nature of the social contract between citizens and their governments. These challenges include identifying the appropriate boundaries between the obligations of the public sector and the responsibilities of individual citizens, the range of public goods the government should supply, and who should pay for and benefit from their provision. The essays in this volume, first published in 2001, focus on two interrelated issues: the making of fiscal policy and the provision of citizens' welfare, particularly regarding pensions and health care. The essays emphasize that there is no single model of a market economy; rather, governments and publics face a range of options for restructuring the socialist welfare state.