Room | : | Lotus Suite 1-4, FL. 22 |
Experiences from pioneering countries in their Universal Health Coverage (UHC) journey present valuable learning opportunities for others. The journey towards UHC is path dependent and context-specific, and at times, it is not an easy path as each country may have their own specific challenges of expansion of the three dimensions of the UHC cube, population coverage, benefit coverage, and financial risk protection.
The political decisions on UHC, inter alia, are not always evidence based as intended. Decisions are often the results of intentional and unintentional power-plays amongst various stakeholders, including how to manage the resistance of interest groups, shifting entrenched positions, and redistributing resources for health. All of these issues are within the scope of ‘political economy’. A better understanding of political economy is vital to accelerate UHC progression. Debates about expanding UHC within a country involve competing visions about the appropriate roles of the public and private sectors; market and state; the commitment and worldview of society, local and central government; the duties and entitlements of youth and elderly, sick and healthy, and rich and poor; and the contribution of health to the advancement of society. Considerations of politics and power shape the decision of a country’s leaders to commit to UHC.
This session will interrogate the political economy of reform in these and other areas, drawing on personal experiences with reform implementation and analysis.
This session engages longstanding themes in the UHC discussion, including questions of universality versus targeting, a generous benefit package versus limited service coverage, high versus low level of financial protection, the appropriate relative roles of the public and private sectors and, importantly, provider payment methods of closed versus open-ended methods. By drawing on the experiences of panelists, this session will illuminate specific examples of these general challenges and discuss the strategies that were used to navigate them. To do this, we pursue four objectives: