Ensuring an equal access to healthcare services that are affordable and of decent quality has increasingly been on the agenda of several developed as well as developing countries across the world. Throughout 2014 and 2015, we published a series of articles focusing on the South Asian region, in which we looked into various aspects of the universal healthcare in The Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, followed by our final article in the series presenting holistic view on bridging the health insurance coverage gap in the region. But South Asia is not the only region working to achieve improvements in the functioning of healthcare systems and the universal health insurance coverage. In South America, where universal healthcare is more prevalent and public health insurance coverage gap is narrower than in most Asian nations, several countries have shown a range of approaches to enhance the equality to access and quality of services within their public healthcare. While the approaches differ, the common focus across the region has been to broaden the inclusion of particularly vulnerable groups of populations, such as the poor, elderly, and the unemployed. We are taking a look into public healthcare systems in selected countries to asses their strength in terms of catering to these beneficiaries.
As universal healthcare systems are unrolled and implemented to include large part of the country’s population, regardless of the geography, a well-functioning public health insurance system must focus on two important components: clear classification of its beneficiaries and appropriate structuring of the healthcare services financing.
In order to ensure the right terms of access to the public healthcare system, a country’s population that can benefit from such public insurance is typically segmented into various groups, such as the working population, grey economy workers, poor population, and the senior citizens. The strength of a public health insurance system lies in its ability to effectively target these various groups with dedicated plans and schemes, as these sections of the population may have different healthcare needs.
A public health insurance system is usually financed through government funding and contributions from the employed population (which apart from the formally-employed population can also include informal sector), with most of the public funding directed at subsidizing the healthcare for poor citizens and other underprivileged groups (depending on their proportion in total population). A system with specific coverage targeted at each of these groups is likely to be more efficient in terms of generating required finances, redistributing them according to beneficiary requirements, and in channeling healthcare resources.
South American countries are known for their inclination to provide or to work towards providing universal healthcare to their citizens. While the shared focus across the region has been to improve equity in access and financing of health services, in several cases leading to tangible positive health outcomes of the populations, public health insurance systems in most of these countries have evolved over a period of time to their current state through experimentation and deliberations over various policies to achieve a system that works best in the local scenario.
South American countries adopted various models to develop and enhance their public healthcare systems and, based on respective exigencies, their public health insurance systems are unique. Despite these differences, a broad level country comparison is possible on the basis of some common parameters, to evaluate how healthcare needs of key population groups are addressed in these countries. This comparison indicates the relative strength of public health insurance systems from the target beneficiaries’ point of view.
EOS Perspective
As South American example indicates, the development and implementation of universal healthcare system is not a solution as such, but rather a first step to ensure that healthcare needs of all population groups, especially the vulnerable ones, are well taken care of. Universal healthcare systems with no dedicated, targeted programs oriented specifically at certain groups in terms of type and availability of services, provisions and procedures, access to healthcare facilities, and assigned funding, are likely to be able to address needs of these groups only to a limited extend.
From beneficiary’s point of view, this results in unavailability of certain health services, lower trust in the system, and might simply lead to negative health outcomes of these populations. Given their limited financial abilities, these beneficiaries are unlikely to turn to private sector where their healthcare needs would be met (unless private insurance players, looking to fill gaps, with or without government collaboration, are able to provide cost-effective health insurance coverage, again targeted specifically at these groups).