Universal Health Coverage (UHC) continues to be one of the most challenging yet important objectives of every national and global health policymaker. While countries are now focusing on managing rising costs of healthcare, unequal access, and potential health dangers, UHC helps everyone access the needed healthcare services without the added worry of financials. UHC is one of the most important goals in the global health landscape.
What does Universal Health Coverage mean?
UHC means access to the neccessary health services without undergoing any sort of financial burden. This comes in the form of essential quality services like health marketing, and preventative treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care. UHC enables people to live longer, healthier lives.
The world health organization gives three objecties that are of equal importance for UHC and defines them as:
- Financial Risk Protection: Protecting people from the financial risks that come with receiving health services.
- Quality of Health Services: The services have to be sufficiently good to improve the health of patients.
- Equity in Access to Health Services: Health services must be availed not just for those able to pay for it, and are equally needed by others.
There is and will continue to be no single approach or path to UHC.
Each country has to build its own route to UHC, depending on what context, priorities, and resources it has.
The Global Movement Towards UHC
The motivation demanding UHC has quickly increased in the past years. To illustrate, all Member States of the United Nations agreed to try and achieve Universal Coverage by 2030 as a Sustainable Development Goal in 2015. This commitment was proof that health is a human right and Universal Health Coverage is the way to guarantee it.
People from any income group have been making progress towards UHC:
- Thailand initiated its Universal Coverage Scheme in 2002. This significantly lowered the out-of-pocket payments that patients had to pay and improved their health outcomes.
- Rwanda was able to attain more than 90% health insurance coverage through community based health insurance schemes.
- Germany is currently showing how UHC can be achieved even with an old system, dating back to 1883. UHC can exist and develop through a system over time.
Even with this progress however, at least one in two people still do not have access to key health services and around 100 million people are annually sent into extreme poverty due to health expenditures.
The Economic Case for UHC
Apart from the moral obligation, UHC additionally makes economic sense. Productivity is increased with a healthier population and shielding the demographic from extreme health expenditure safeguards their savings while enhancing household consumption.
The economic advantages of improved health outcomes under UHC might exceed the program costs by two to four times, according to studies.
In addition, UHC fosters economic resilience by:
- Contributing to a decrease in productivity loss due to sickness
- Stopping households from going into debt due to healthcare costs
- Providing additional employment opportunities within the health industry
- Enhancing health security and preparedness for pandemics
Challenges in Achieving UHC
One of the issues that must be tackled with UHC are financing challenges such as how to sustainably fund expanded health coverage; in particular, low income countries with small tax bases find this especially difficult.
Although difficult, these problems such as the health workforce shortage which poses a serious barrier due to a global lack of available healthcare workers, especially in rural and low income areas, will need to be solved.
Other issues that come with UHC are quality concerns in which a lack of coverage will suffice with no improvement to the quality of service, political will which requires opening up funding for long term political efforts that persist through fluctuating elections or varying administrations, as well as technological gaps which involve the use of digital health solutions.
The Future of UHC
There are several trends that can be looked to while Australia moves forward that will assist in shaping UHC.
Digital transformation – The expansion of telemedicine, AI-assisted diagnostics, as well as the use of health information systems increases access to healthcare while simultaneously producing data that can be used to augment the management of a health system.
Integrated care models – Integration of primary healthcare, specialist services, along with public health merges several departments to build a better system based on patient orientation.
Resilience building – Even the most advanced health systems experienced gaps during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the need for building resilience towards future emergencies.
Adaptation to climate change – The changing health patterns and infrastructure as a result of climate change necessitates new approaches from UHC programs in order to deal with new healthcare issues.
Conclusion
The concept of Universal Health Coverage easily forms one of the greatest achievements of mankind. It encapsulates the idea that health is a universal human right rather than a benefit available based on one’s social class. With all these challenges, it is evident that the world continues to move towards UHC.
Achieving the 2030 target is possible only when there is complete cooperation of governments, health providers, NGOs, and community members. Moving forward requires additional funding, creativity, political willpower, and collective resolve to achieve equality in health financing.
UHC serves as the bold promise that, regardless of one’s social and economic circumstances, no one should fall victim to inadequate access to or inability to afford medical attention, especially in a world rife with inequality.
This is not only effective public health policy, but also a bedrock for a more equitable and flourishing world.