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“The first forms of social security can be traced back to the late middle ages when basic forms of social protection for selected (privileged) groups of society – free farmers and skilled craftsmen – started to emerge in the form of so-called Ausgedinge (a proportion of income saved for retirement or inability to work).

“However, the foundations of a formal health care system emerged only during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy between the mid-19th century and the end of the First World War. Two acts from this period were particularly important and have shaped the health system until the present day. The first was the Imperial Sanitary Act of 1870 (Reichssanitätsgesetz, 1870), which has influenced the distribution of competencies between the federal and the Länder level by giving the federal level responsibility of sanitary supervision and epidemic hygiene (see also Table 2.1, first and third rows). The second was the Associations Act of 1867 (Vereinsgesetz, 1867), which allowed for the formation of association-based health- or invalidity relief funds, thus laying the legal foundation for the subsequent introduction of formal health insurance funds. In 1887/88, the industrial accident and health insurance scheme for workers was introduced on the basis of self-governing independent funds. By 1918, more than 600 health, pension, and work accident insurance funds had been established on the territory of modern Austria, which were organized along professional groups, Länder or other criteria such as language or political ideology.”

Source: Bachner F, Bobek J, Habimana K, Ladurner J, Lepuschütz L, Ostermann H, Rainer L, Schmidt A E, Zuba M, Quentin W, Winkelmann J. Austria: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2018; 20(3): 1 – 256.

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“In 1955, the Austrian Parliament passed the General Social Insurance Act (Allgemeines Sozialversicherungsgesetz, 1955, ASVG), which came into force on 1 January 1956. The ASVG was the culmination of efforts made after 1945 to revise and standardize social insurance legislation for blue- and white-collar workers while eliminating the provisions remaining from imperial law. It is the “basic law” of social insurance, encompassing the areas of health, work accidents and pensions insurance for all employees in the fields of industry, mining, commerce and trade, transport, agriculture and forestry, and also regulates health insurance for pensioners of the covered groups.

“From 1955 onwards, social insurance coverage was extended progressively, e.g. to farmers (1965), civil servants (1967), and refugees (2005) (see Table 2.2). Consequently, insurance coverage increased from approximately 70% of the population in 1955 to approximately 99.9% in 2017.”

Source: Bachner F, Bobek J, Habimana K, Ladurner J, Lepuschütz L, Ostermann H, Rainer L, Schmidt A E, Zuba M, Quentin W, Winkelmann J. Austria: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2018; 20(3): 1 – 256.

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated January 21, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.