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International Seminar by Volkan Yılmaz, Changing origins of inequalities in access to health care services in Turkey: From occupational status to income
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Changing origins of inequalities in access to health care services in Turkey: From occupational status to income
Volkan Yilmaz, Assistant Professor of Social Policy, Bogazici University, Istanbul
Health care reforms have always been critical political arenas within which the parameters of citizens’ access to health care services and thus the new terms of social bargain that backs social policies are being negotiated. Despite the relative success of Turkey in establishing public health insurance schemes and in developing a public capacity for health care services delivery since late 1940s, Turkey’s health care system largely failed to institute equality in the access to health care services. With the promise of abolishing these unjustified inequalities, Justice and Development Party (AKP) launched Transformation in Health Program in 2003. Since then, Turkey’s health care system has been undergoing a significant transformation. On the one hand, with the unification of all public health insurance schemes under a compulsory universal health insurance scheme and equalization of benefit packages for all publicly insured, Transformation in Health Program succeeded in abolishing the occupational status-based inequalities in access to health care services. On the other hand, this article suggests that the Program changed the main origin of inequalities in access to health care services from occupational status to income. As the country suffers from an uneven distribution of income, here it is argued that the genesis of income-based inequalities in access poses a significant threat against the realization of the social citizenship ideal in Turkey.
