PUBLIC PURSE IS KEY TO HEALTH
To deliver adequate medical services, states must ensure the wealthy help pay for the poor
HEALTH is a human right. When people are not able to access the healthcare they need, especially if this is for reasons of cost, their human rights are denied. It is vital for the wider fight for rights, justice and sustainable development that policymakers’ actions are informed by this linkage.
The world has just marked Human Rights Day on December 10. Yesterday, December 12, was an equally significant date: the very first official Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day endorsed by the United Nations.
UHC is built on principles of equity and fairness, with services allocated according to people’s needs and the health system financed according to people’s ability to pay.
As UN secretary-general, I was proud to launch the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 as a roadmap to a better planet for current and future generations. All world leaders committed to delivering UHC when they signed up to the goals.
After stepping down from the UN, I joined The Elders, a group – set up by Nelson Mandela – of independent world leaders who work for peace, justice and human rights.
I am delighted that UHC is one of The Elders’ top priorities. As a young man in the Republic of Korea, I witnessed our transition to UHC, when in 1977 President Park Chung-Hee launched nationwide reforms which meant that everyone could access life-saving healthcare.
This process is now occurring across the world at all income levels as governments realise that, to reach UHC, it is necessary to replace private voluntary healthcare financing with compulsory public financing.
The only wealthy country yet to make this transition is, ironically, the world’s biggest economy – the US.
Despite spending 17% of its gross domestic product on healthcare, 30 million Americans are without health insurance, while many more are under-insured, and don’t use the services they need because of high co-payments.
When I lived in the US I was frequently amazed at how expensive health services were, and how unfair it was that the services my family and I used weren’t available for everyone.
Sadly, the present administration’s determination to derail former president Obama’s Affordable Care Act is only going to make this situation worse. This will take America further from the global UHC goal.
However, on two occasions over the past year, I have participated with my fellow Elders in health events in New York and California which suggest that at a state level, there is an appetite to move more quickly towards UHC. With healthcare now at the top of the political agenda across the US, there is a real chance for progressive states to launch publicly financed healthcare systems which might catalyse similar reforms nationwide.
Many middle-income countries that historically had inequitable, privately financed systems now have the resources to switch to a publicly financed system. What is required to catalyse this change is genuine political will, like we saw in South Korea in 1977.
Over the past three years The Elders have been working with leaders to encourage them to bring publicly financed UHC to their people. President Joko Widodo of Indonesia is a good example of a leader committed to UHC, who is using savings from cutting fuel subsidies and increasing tobacco taxes to finance UHC.
India is another country on the verge of massive healthcare reforms, and it was a privilege for myself and fellow Elder Gro Harlem Brundtland to visit Delhi and Ahmedabad in September to witness progress being made at a national and state level.
After decades of underfunding, it is commendable that Prime Minister Modi has committed his government to more than double public health spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2025.
However, we were concerned to see the main emphasis is on insuring people against expensive in-patient, tertiary hospital care rather than investing in more cost-effective primary care services.
We saw these primary care services (PHC) working very well in Delhi, where people are returning to the public sector to access free PHC services in the state government’s impressive Mohalla clinics. This is a tried and tested strategy to improve access for the poor that has brought UHC to China, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Finally, we are excited by recent developments in Africa, where in the last few months the presidents of South Africa and Kenya have made UHC a priority for their governments. In both, the presidents themselves are overseeing reforms that will use mostly tax financing to bring universal, free health services to everyone.
All countries on the path to UHC face a crossroads: one path leads to a US-style, privately financed, fragmented healthcare system, where the rich have unlimited choice of expensive services but the poor fail to access care, or suffer bankruptcy if they do.
The other is the path increasingly being taken in the rest of the world, where even in highly capitalist economies, everyone gets access to care because the state makes the rich pay for the poor.
Our advice to the US, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya and other countries approaching the crossroads – like Nigeria and Pakistan – is to take this path, as this is the only navigable route to healthcare for all and just, stable and prosperous societies.
Ban is a former UN secretary-general. He writes in his capacity as deputy chair of The Elders