COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ROMANIAN AND LUXEMBOURGISH HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS

The state of health of the population is determined by access to health on the one hand and to the access to health services on the other. Access to health depends to a large extent on external factors to the health system: genetic factors, factors environment, economic development factors and socio-cultural factors. The access to health care is almost entirely influenced by the organization of the health system. Accessibility to healthcare services is determined by the convergence between the offer and the demand for such services, or, in other words, the availability of real-life facilities compared to the demand based on real health needs. Disparities in access to discrimination arise for at least four reasons: ethnic or racial; economic costs here, including the costs of the population (co-payments, treatment and hospitalization costs) as well as the other costs (transport costs, waiting times); inadequate geographic location of facilities; the unequal quality of services of the same type. This paper aims to examine two countries which are part of the European Union, Romania and Luxembourg, who have similar socio-economic groups and healthcare professionals with training, but are drastically different when it comes to the quality of healthcare received. The public healthcare system will be broken down into its sub-structures and compared to that of the private healthcare system, while taking an in depth look into the Romanian and Luxembourgish health systems, outlining differences and similarities and offering recommendations for the future.