Increased Public Financing and Health Care Outcomes in Russia

The paper proposes to estimate effectiveness in the rise of public health care expenditure within the 2006 Russian health care project by using the following indicators: mortality of working age population (from all causes except for external), life expectancy at birth, number of illness days for working population, and infant mortality under 1. Regional time-trend eliminated panel data regression analysis demonstrates significance of the dummy for the year 2006 in explaining the first three of the above health outcomes. Price-level adjusted medical staff salary turns out to be a significant predictor, too. Yet, since increased financing was almost unrelated to efficiency issues, it may be seen only as a first step in perfecting the post-Soviet Russian health system.