Resource allocation and health financing

The Ebola crisis exposed the weaknesses of healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries created mainly by insufficient funding. Given the global community’s commitment to universal health coverage (UHC), the Ebola outbreak has prompted serious reflection among health policy decision-makers. One of the central features of this debate is financing: how can relatively poor countries find the money to pay for universal health coverage? To date, low- and middle-income countries have been growing toward UHC through social health insurance systems funded through employment. Yet, progress has been slow and uneven leaving people in the informal sector, who are the majority of the population, out was insurance schemes. Rather than seeking innovative solutions to this old problem, this blog outlines how Aaron Reeves argues that what is needed is a renewed commitment to an old solution: tax-based financing. Using data from low- and middle-income countries my colleagues and I examined the association between tax revenues and health spending. We found that tax revenue was a major statistical determinant of progress towards UHC. Each $10 per-capita increase in tax revenue was associated with an additional $1 of public health spending per capita. Whereas each $10 increase in GDP per capita was associated with an increase of $0.10. Crucially, tax revenues sit on the pathway between economic growth and health spending. In short, tax financing is an efficient way of translating economic growth into health spending. Countries with more tax revenues have also made more progress on other indicators of UHC, even after adjusting for economic activity in the country. Among tax poor countries, greater tax revenues are associated with more women being attended by a skilled healthcare worker during pregnancy and greater access to healthcare for all people.

With user fees now seen as a major hindrance to universal health coverage, many countries have introduced fee reduction or elimination policies, but there is growing evidence that adherence to reduced fees is often highly imperfect. In 2004, Kenya adopted a reduced and uniform user fee policy providing fee exemptions to many groups. The authors present data on user fee implementation, revenue and expenditure from a nationally representative survey of 248 Kenyan public health centres and dispensaries in 2010. No facilities adhered fully to the user fee policy across eight tracer conditions, with adherence ranging from 62.2% for an adult with tuberculosis to 4.2% for an adult with malaria. Three quarters of exit interviewees had paid some fees and a quarter of interviewees were required to purchase additional medical supplies at a later stage from a private drug retailer. No consistent pattern of association was identified between facility characteristics and policy adherence. User fee revenues accounted for almost all facility cash income, with average revenue of USD 683 per facility per year. Fee revenue was mainly used to cover support staff, non-drug supplies and travel allowances. Adherence to user fee policy was very low, leading to concerns about the impact on access and the financial burden on households. However, the potential to ensure adherence was constrained by the facilities’ need for revenue to cover basic operating costs, highlighting the need for alternative funding strategies for peripheral health facilities.

Social protection and taxation feature prominently as key policy instruments available to governments in the pursuit of development goals in both the Financing for Development (FFD) Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This reflects a growing recognition among policy makers in the international development context of the powerful role fiscal policy plays in shaping development outcomes. It also represents an important opportunity for closer consideration of the ways in which taxation and social protection operate jointly in practice. Taxes and transfers commonly continue to be discussed separately, yet in practice they interact to shape the distribution and redistribution of income and wealth both directly – through the distribution of transfers and the tax burden – and by influencing processes of government accountability and legitimacy, the quality of service provision and people’s willingness to pay taxes. If appropriately designed and implemented, taxes and transfers can make a significant dent in poverty and inequality. In high-income OECD countries, direct taxes and transfers alone contribute to an average 30% reduction in income inequality, reducing the average Gini coefficient from 0.41 to 0.29. In comparison, in developing countries, their impact is more muted. There is thus scope to strengthen these systems, particularly as in July 2015, world leaders in Addis Ababa agreed on a commitment to delivering social protection and essential public services for all through a new social compact to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere’.

Access to health insurance is expected to have positive effect in improving access to healthcare and offer financial risk protection to households. Ghana began the implementation of a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in 2004 as a way to ensure equitable access to basic healthcare for all residents. After a decade of its implementation, national coverage is just about 34% of the national population. Affordability of the NHIS contribution is often cited by households as a major barrier to enrolment in the NHIS without any rigorous analysis of this claim. In light of the global interest in achieving universal health insurance coverage, this study seeks to examine the extent to which affordability of the NHIS contribution is a barrier to full insurance for households and a burden on their resources. The study uses data from a cross-sectional household survey involving 2,430 households from three districts in Ghana conducted between January-April, 2011. Affordability of the NHIS contribution is analysed using the household budget-based approach based on the normative definition of affordability. The burden of the NHIS contributions to households is assessed by relating the expected annual NHIS contribution to household non-food expenditure and total consumption expenditure. Households which cannot afford full insurance were identified. Results show that 66% of uninsured households and 70% of partially insured households could afford full insurance for their members. EnrolLing all household members in the NHIS would account for 5.9% of household non-food expenditure or 2.0% of total expenditure but higher for households in the first (11.4%) and second (7.0%) socio-economic quintiles. All the households (29%) identified as unable to afford full insurance were in the two lower socio-economic quintiles and had large household sizes. Non-financial factors relating to attributes of the insurer and health system problems also affect enrolment in the NHIS. Affordability of full insurance would be a burden on households with low socio-economic status and large household size. Innovative measures are needed to encourage abled households to enrol. Policy should aim at abolishing the registration fee for children, pricing insurance according to socio-economic status of households and addressing the inimical non-financial factors to increase NHIS coverage.