REVIEW OF THE EFFECT OF HEALTH EFFECT PARAMETERS ON HEALTH EXPENDITURES - THE CASE OF TURKEY (1990-2018)

Abstract

Total health expenditures display an upward acceleration in line with the ever-increasing health supply and demand. Especially in case the public sector undertakes the expenses, it is important to evaluate the expenditure items more carefully and to determine the factors causing the expenditure and to apply them rationally. In this study, it is aimed to examine how some determinants that affect health (measles vaccination rate, number of doctors, number of nurses, harmful CO2 gas emission into the atmosphere) affect health expenditures in the long and short term. Time series analysis was made in the study. First, whether the series are stationary or not was examined by unit root tests. As a result of the stationarity tests, the short and long term coefficients were estimated through the ARDL cointegration test and error correction model. Finally, the direction of the relationship between variables was tried to be determined by the Toda-Yamomoto causality test. As a result of the study, it was evaluated that total health expenditures now show in direct proportion to the amount of CO2 gas in the long term, it has a negative interaction with the number of nurses, and there is no significant relationship with the measles vaccination rate and the number of doctors. In the short term, a negative relationship was found with the number of doctors and measles vaccination rate, and the same direction with the number of nurses and the amount of CO2. One-way causality connections between parameters were determined by causality analysis. It has been revealed that the increase in the rate of measles vaccination and the increase in the number of nurses has an effect on health expenditures. When the results obtained in the study are evaluated, the total health expenditure; developing technological opportunities, increase in health accessibility, increase in health personnel employment, increase in environmental pollution caused by industrialization, increase in vaccination costs and so on. As a result of the situations it is constantly rising. This situation emerges as a very important issue that health policy makers should take into account. It can be predicted that our country will have positive effects on the level of development by taking the necessary legal measures and reducing the total health expenditure and using the resources more efficiently.