Opening the black box of under-health people: the case of Spain

Abstract

The most famous modern definition of health was created during a Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization in 1946: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This definition has not been amended and, since then, many indicators have been proposed to measure health such as Self-Assessed Health (SAH) status. It provides an overall measure of a population’s health based on individuals’ personal perceptions of their own health.In this paper, we focus our analysis on “under-health” as the fact of having a level that falls behind the health requirements necessary to perform what is considered an “expected life based on Self Assessed Health”. For Spain using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we can confirm there exist under-healthy people by occupation, age group and sex. Additionally, under-healthy workers are most likely to be found among skilled agricultural, fishery workers and elementary occupations.

Effect of having private health insurance on the use of health care services: the case of Spain

“…In Spain, as a result of the economic situation, there exists an important problem regarding “long waiting lists” for non-urgent medical care, in diagnostic or therapeutic procedures. In this sense, it is important to study whether promoting private medical insurance would reduce waiting lists and increase self-assessed health [ 33 , 34 ]. Therefore, evaluation of economic policies provides feedback on their efficiency, effectiveness and performance and can be critical to policy improvement and innovation.…”