The Healthcare Systems' Efficiency - a Cross-Country Comparative Study

¿How can national and supranational institutions increase the healthcare sector's performance? Which government controllable inputs have a higher impact on the healthcare outputs?¿ are two questions which have been most debated in the last lustrum by many national and supranational organizations around the world, a recent proof being the 2013 WTO¿s Health 2020: the European policy for health and well-being. Thus, the present work attempts at answering these questions through adopting a quantitative research paradigm and a positivism philosophy. A first chapter introduces the reader to the general framework of the healthcare systems and to the main institutional efforts taken towards improving the health status at supranational level. A second chapter details the characteristics of different healthcare system typologies and lists several healthcare proxies. A third chapter tests for the validity of two research hypotheses. Firstly, differences in healthcare outcomes can be explained by differences in healthcare inputs. Secondly, quantitative conclusions might be drawn in favour of an outperforming healthcare system model.