Universal Health Coverage: Bridging the Gaps

Achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is a main goal of the National Health Strategy, and is based on the principles of justice, equity, poverty reduction and the rational use of resources. It requires financing or providing preventive and curative quality health care for all, to satisfy each one’s needs against affordable contributions. Whereas alleviating the financial burden, as much as possible, on households, especially the poor, remains a main objective of UHC.
The purpose of Universal Health coverage is to ensure universal accessibility to services that address population health needs and country health priorities with adequate quality, without incurring households financial ruin. This implies reaching a consensus over two major policy decisions: 1st defining a benefit package, and 2nd, setting an acceptable level of financial burden on households, more specifically the OOP bearable level by income category. Starting up from scratch, the benefit package would include essential health services such as PHC, and the government would cover as much health interventions as its budget allows, by beginning with the most cost effective ones such as immunization, TB treatment and prenatal care. Thus the population would expect regular upgrading of the system and would welcome incorporating progressively more advanced services such as renal dialysis, treatment for cancer, and sophisticated surgeries. The dilemma of the health system in Lebanon is the current existence of a universal coverage for tertiary care and sophisticated treatments such as open heart and joint replacement surgeries and expensive cancer patent drugs, whereas, paradoxically, prevention and PHC services are not universally covered..(Read More...)