TY - RPRT A1 - Ognyanova, Diana T1 - Health Care Reforms in Poland N2 - Health care reforms carried out in Poland since 1990 have led to the decentralization of ownership and financial and management responsibility of health care establishments; privatization of health care providers; stronger reliance on private expenditure on health care with rising out-of-pocket and informal payments; exclusion of some services from the package of universal health services; and restricted access to some health services in form of waiting lists.1 Even though the official aim of the reforms was to preserve a state guaranteed egalitarian health care system while ensuring optimal use of resources by the introduction of market-type mechanisms, smaller than expected gains in efficiency, together with demographic and technological pressure on health care costs and a political and economic climate unable to significantly increase public spending, resulted in a more privatized and unequal system than intended.2 Hence, the reforms of the health system as part of the general transformation of the economy and the welfare state illustrate a shift towards a hybrid “post-communist European type”3 of welfare state which has inherited some features of the socialist regime, but is increasingly shaped by liberal ideas. T3 - Hertie School Working Papers Series - 9 Y1 - 2008 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-685 ER -