Inequalities in access to healthcare

摘要: The right of everyone to timely access to affordable, preventive and curative care of good quality is one of the key principles of the recently proclaimed European Pillar of Social Rights 1. This means that access to healthcare should be effective for each person: it should be provided when people need it, through a balanced geographical distribution of healthcare facilities, professionals and policies to reduce waiting times. Costs should not prevent people from receiving the healthcare they need. Curative care, health promotion and disease prevention should be relevant, appropriate, safe and effective. Progress towards this principle is currently monitored by the European Pillar of Social Rights’ Social Scoreboard indicator on “self-reported unmet need for medical care” 2. Promoting access to healthcare has also been one of the core objectives—alongside achieving high quality healthcare and financial sustainability of health systems—of the healthcare strand of the Social Open Method of Coordination since 2004. More recently, reduction of health inequalities, both in order to achieve social cohesion and to break the vicious circle of poor health contributing to poverty and social exclusion, has been advocated in key European Commission documents (including the Social Investment Package and the Annual Growth Surveys). Member States’ health systems have received increasing attention in the European Semester process, including through the Country-Specific Recommendations and the Commission’s Country Reports.