Resources of Health Care Financing in Latvia: Historical Review and Eventual Changes

The creation of health care as a system is globally associated with the introduction of the health insurance which means that the state to a bigger or smaller degree starts ruling the issues that are connected with the protection of the population health and partly assumes financial responsibility for the implementation of the process. The aim of this research is to perform the historical review of the financing resources of the health care in Latvia, to evaluate their development during the health care reform and forecast eventual changes. To achieve the aim of the research, the methods of the theoretical research are used alongside the methods of the empirical research. For data processing and analysis, the statistical analysis methods and methods of forecasting are used. The main results and conclusions of this research are dedicated to a considerable number of changes developed during the health care reform, particularly on issue of the health financing resources that bothered the development of reform. The authors of this article carried out an expert assessment in order to obtain additional information about the most optimal sources of healthcare financing. The authors’ carried out an expert assessment that shows the expert opinions about using revenue from the specific taxes as a source of financing for the medicines’ reimbursement scheme show that the noticeable predominance of the assessment is formed in the direction of the social tax (state mandatory social insurance payments) in comparison to the resident income tax. According to the experts’ opinions, approx. 75% of the financing for the reimbursement scheme should be drawn from the state budget funds, 16% from private funding, and 9% from the funds of the municipal budget.