How will future health policy impact on regional disparities and healthcare in Latvia

¹ Rıga Stradiņš University, Riga, Latvia
² Rıga Stradiņš University, Department of Political Science, Riga, Latvia

Abstract

Latvia is a country with high level of regional disparities and as researches have approved – income, education, and environment significantly affect the status of people's health. The reforms in healthcare have been carried out under the flags of accessibility, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality since 1991. Some groups support the idea that the state should take over almost all services, the others claim that more responsibilities should be transferred to the private sector, and dispute on service provider network and financing system. In accordance with the coalition theory and legislation of Latvia, the initiators and designers of the structural reforms are politicians, elected by the citizens. In theory, every politician represents the political party with its ideology and vision that is expressed in the Programme of the party. Due to Parliament elections in 2018, to understand which way the country will go, and how the chosen strategy will impact on the regional disparities, analysis of the middle-term development strategy was made. Research results showed that political parties in Latvia are not based on the ideology and the strategical development vision of the State, so the development and changes made in legislation are mainly ad-hoc decisions or the result of lobbying activities of influential groups. Due to the lack of middle term vision as the gap between long-term development strategy and short-term decisions, unfortunately, the prognosis of future health politics leads to the conclusion that regional disparities and the problem with Health care accessibility in next decades will only rise.