Health interventions: health services

Public (government/social) health insurance coverage is the share of the population (%) eligible for a defined set of health care goods and services that are included in total public health expenditure. Private health insurance coverage is the share of the population (%) based on a head count of individuals covered by at least one private health insurance policy (including both individuals covered in their own name and dependants).

Relevant dimensions and subgroups

Calendar year
Country
Sex (see data availability)

Preferred data type and data source

Preferred data type

Administrative data (insurance policies)

Preferred data source

OECD Health Data

Data availability

OECD Health Data is an electronic database released annually in June, available online and on CD-ROM. A subscription is needed. Data available since 1960, early years not complete for all countries. No data by sex available.

Data periodicity

Annually

Rationale

Indicator describing (equal) access to services. Indicator for social inequalities in health care system.

Remarks

‘The proportion of the population covered by health insurance’ is one of the indicators of the health and long term care strand of the Social Protection Committee developed under the Open Method of Coordination (OMC).
A subscription is needed to access OECD Health Data. Access however to the list of variables and to the full hypertext for definitions, sources and methods is available free of charge.
This ECHIM/OECD indicator is defined in such a way that coverage is independent of the scope of cost-sharing.
OECD numbers include both public and private health insurance coverage. The OECD numbers are meant to have avoided duplications in the calculation.
National sources used for this indicator differ in nature (administrative data, surveys), hence comparability between countries is not optimal.

European Commission - Public Health: healthindicators.org

Definition

Calculation