Health Policy in Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised important questions about health systems resilience and the role of health policy in crisis management regarding not only health but also social and economic consequences. This draws attention to the health policy in Bulgaria in terms of its ability to deal with the health system challenges during various stages of its development. Based on synthesis of the previous studies results, we comment on the main characteristics of health policy in several crutial periods of time - before, during and after the introduction of health insurance system in Bulgaria. The analysis of health policy at some key stages in the health system development, when significant changes have been made or should be made, outlines the crisis in health policy itself. In this case, it is a crisis of values, leading to replacement of some core health system principles under the pressure of random and often external political and economic factors. This results in inability of the health policy in Bulgaria to ensure health system sustainability.