So what are the health financing options that are conducive for universal coverage?
In fact, there's a continuum of health financing options for universal coverage,
namely those that comprise all health financing mechanisms with prepayment,
pooling, and equity in access and equity in financing.
So in fact, health financing systems that move towards universal coverage,
they are clustered around text-based financing and social health insurance or
a mix of both, and in fact, in most of the countries, it is indeed a mix.
A country will, at a given point in time, lean more towards one particular health
financing option than another, as it will be confronted with different constraints
and enabling factors of a social, economic, and political nature.
So one may ask, what is better, tax-based financing or social health insurance?
But in fact, that's the wrong question.
Inherently, none of the two is better than the other one and
very much depends on the country context.
And even more,
it really depends on how in detail such a health financing system is designed.
So let's look at another core question that one has to ask.
How to organize and what to improve
within the health financing system to achieve universal coverage?
And the argument I'm making here is that one of the key factors is the role of
institutional design and organizational practice of a health financing system.