Israeli Healthcare System and Policies

The chapter analyzes the Israeli healthcare system, focusing on its main characteristics since the legislation of the National Health Insurance law in 1994. The law transformed the system from a social security-based system (Bismarckian model) into a universal, single-payer one, with elements of managed competition between public nonprofit sick funds. However, a few years after the legislation of the law, the government promoted the process of partial privatization of the healthcare system, mostly due to funding cutbacks. Consequently, the Israeli healthcare system became more unequal and less efficient.