Healthcare in the welfare state: Assessing emerging welfare state typologies in Eastern Europe using hierarchical cluster analysis

This paper analyzes welfare state groupings with several cluster analyses on the EU27 and the 10 Central and Eastern European (CEE) states admitted into the EU in 2004 and 2007 using 20 social policy and public healthcare indicators as variables. The focus is on delineating (a) the robustness of the CEE block in the EU27 and (b) the existence of distinct welfare and healthcare groups within Eastern Europe. I found significant quantitative evidence in the cluster analyses of both the eastern welfare state type in the EU27 and the existence of corporatist and developing welfare state types within the eastern welfare state type. Following the cluster analysis, I found significant evidence in my quantitative assessment and the literature on welfare states in Eastern Europe of informal payments, out-of-pocket payments, and public healthcare inefficiency at the state-level as the leading factors in the distinction of states within the CEE10.