Abstract

All South European healthcare systems approved reforms in the late 70s and early 80s aimed at transforming their social insurance healthcare systems into national health services, although with different levels of success. The great recession has posed an unprecedented test on the healthcare systems of the Southern periphery due to the coincidence of increasing health need and significant reduction of public budgets. The article endeavors to evaluate to what extent universal access has been eroded in the National Health Services of Spain, Portugal and Greece with the objective of situating the Italian case (analyzed in other articles of this special issue) comparatively with other South European cases.