What healthcare financing changes are needed to reach universal coverage in South Africa?

Strategic Purchasing: The Neglected Health Financing Function for Pursuing Universal Health Coverage in Low- and Middle-Income Countries; Comment on “What’s Needed to Develop Strategic Purchasing in Healthcare? Policy Lessons from a Realist Review”

Sanderson et al’s realist review of strategic purchasing identifies insights from two strands of theory: the economics of organisation and inter-organisational relationships. Our findings from a programme of research conducted by the RESYST (Resilient and Responsive Health Systems) consortium in seven countries echo these results, and add to them the crucial area of org...

Defining Pathways and Trade-offs Toward Universal Health Coverage; Comment on “Ethical Perspective: Five Unacceptable Trade-offs on the Path to Universal Health Coverage”

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) World Health Report 2010, “Health systems financing, the path to universal coverage,” promoted universal health coverage (UHC) as an aspirational objective for country health systems. Yet, in addition to the dimensions of services and coverage, distribution of coverage in the population, and financial risk protection highlighted by the report, the conside...

Universal Pharmacare in Canada: A Prescription for Equity in Healthcare

Despite progressive universal drug coverage and pharmaceutical policies found in other countries, Canada remains the only developed nation with a publicly funded healthcare system that does not include universal coverage for prescription drugs. In the absence of a national pharmacare plan, a province may choose to cover a specific sub-population for certain drugs. Altho...

Universal Access to Surgical Care and Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case for Surgical Systems Research; Comment on “Global Surgery – Informing National Strategies for Scaling Up Surgery in Sub-Saharan Africa”

National level experiences, lessons learnt from the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era coupled with the academic evidence and proposals generated by the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (LCoGS) together with the economic arguments and recommendations from the World Bank Group’s “Essential Surgery” Disease Control Priorities (DCP3) publication, provided the impetus for political commitment...

Financing for Healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia: Risk Pooling & Risk-Sharing Arrangements; Essential Strategy for Overcoming Poverty Costs