The coordination in European Union healthcare after Covid-19

This chapter applies data envelopement analysis to produce measures of efficiency which may support European Union larger role in healthcare policies. Overall, the authors do not find support for an increasing coordinating role of the EU in healthcare policies after considering the overall spending, highly dependent on curative medicine. However, the answer changes when considering specific subfunctions of the European health systems. Subfunctions such as procurement and prevention could use a larger role on the part of the European Union to save financial resources by effectively managing externalities and having a more centralized system of procurement. The results are also extended to the role of the EU in procuring vaccines for the European citizens, who overall supported the initiative.