Researchers: Yossi Weiss¹, Royi Barnea

Background: The Israeli National Health Insurance Law provides permanent residents with a basket of health services through non-profit public health insurance funds, independently of the individual’s ability to pay. Since 2015, several reforms and programs came into effect that were aimed at reinforcing public healthcare and redressing negative aspects of the public health system, and specifically the constant rise in private health expenditure. These include the "From Reimbursement-to-Networks Arrangement", the "Cooling-off Period" program and the program to reduce waiting times.

Objectives: To identify, describe, and analyze 1) the volume of publicly and privately funded elective surgical procedures; and 2) private health expenditure on surgical procedures.

Method: We analyzed the effects of the reforms on the volume and financing sources of surgical activities in private hospitals.

Findings: Our findings show an increase in the volume of publicly funded activities in the health system while private spending on health declined.

Conclusions: The reforms strongly affected the distribution of health expenditure by financing source, but it is unclear if waiting times were reduced. However, it is unclear whether the reforms succeeded in lowering waiting periods. Policy implications: Health reforms must be accompanied by indicators for measuring the reform success.

Research end date: 05/2020