THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTHCARE AND GROWTH IN OECD EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

One of the main features of the economy, the scarcity of resources available at some point, made it necessary to assess medical services in terms of the costs and benefits they imply. The importance of medical services in modern society has grown over time and nowadays a significant part of a state's gross domestic product or national budget is directed to the healthcare sector. The relevance of healthcare for the economy is also reflected in the share in the labor force active persons of the persons involved in this sector of activity. Furthermore, the health of an individual and implicitly of a country is not exogenous, being determined, at least in part, by the level of investments in the health system and the quality of medical services. In this context, the medical system, which presents a number of features that are difficult to quantify economically and which is not characterized by perfect competition, needs to be analyzed from the point of view of a direct relationship with the economic indicators as well. Therefore, in our study, we conducted an econometric modeling of economic and medical variables from eight OECD, Eastern European countries, from 2000 to 2017, in order to highlight the specific interdependencies. The obtained results partially confirm the theoretical assumptions, suggesting a relationship between the health level (the life expectancy of the inhabitants) of a country and its economic characteristics. Thus, increasing spending on health and density of medical staff have a positive impact on life expectancy