One of the glaring gaps in Canada’s universal healthcare system is the low level of public financing of prescription drugs - 42.7% of total spending in 2018. At the federal level there is renewed interest in moving towards universal coverage, supported by a recently commissioned report on how to achieve it. It will take superb political navigation to extract Canadian ph...

A major challenge in monitoring universal health coverage (UHC) is identifying an indicator that can adequately capture the multiple components underlying the UHC initiative. Effective coverage, which unites individual and intervention characteristics into a single metric, offers a direct and flexible means to measure health system performance at different levels. We view effective coverage as ...

BACKGROUND In the absence of an adult vaccination register, coverage estimates for influenza and pneumococcal vaccination come from surveys and other data sources. METHODS Systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining vaccination coverage in Australian adults from 1990 to 2015, focusing on groups funded under the National Immunisation Program, and intervals prior to and following t...

BACKGROUND Medicines are a major driver of quality, safety, equity, and cost of care in low and middle-income country health systems. Universal health coverage implementers must explicitly address appropriate use of medicines to realize the health benefits of medicines, avoid wasting scarce resources, and sustain the financial viability of universal health coverage schemes. DISCUSSION Medicin...

South Africa is considering introducing a universal health care system. A key concern for policy-makers and the general public is whether or not this reform is affordable. Modelling the resource and revenue generation requirements of alternative reform options is critical to inform decision-making. This paper considers three reform scenarios: universal coverage funded by increased allocations t...