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Universal Access, National Health Insurance, and Private Health Care

Charles L. Bennett, MD, PhD; Bernhard Schwarz, MD; Professor Dr Michael Marberger

JAMA. 1993;269(21):2789-2794.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Recent political and social changes in Central and Eastern Europe have resulted in the formation of many new health care systems. Austria, the former Czechoslovakia, and Hungary had similar political and social backgrounds until 1918 as part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. With World War I, separate political systems formed in these countries; however, they maintained comparable medical systems until 1938. The Austrian system has not changed substantially since 1938, whereas in the former Czechoslovakia and Hungary, communist ideology resulted in profound disintegration of the health care system. The health care in Austria is a national health care system with good access to care, few malpractice lawsuits, and little tendency toward overuse of medical resources.

Austria, a country of 7.5 million inhabitants, is made up of nine distinct states. Vienna, with a population of 1.7 million, is the most populated state and has the largest population of refugees and elderly. The . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Department of Medicine, Duke University Durham, NC; Institute fur Sozialmedizin, Medical School University of Vienna, (Austria); Department of Urology, Medical School University of Vienna (Austria)

Footnotes
Edited by Annette Flanagin, RN, MA, Associate Senior Editor.

Reprint requests to Department of Health Services Research and Development (152), Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 508 Fulton St, Durham, NC 27705 (Dr Bennett, for requests within the United States); or Department of Urology, Währingergürt 18-20,1090, Vienna, Austria (Professor Marberger, for requests outside the United States).

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