Saturday, January 31, 2015

UHC 26: Public and Private Spending on Health

The 3rd paper which I briefly discussed in Ateneo last Wednesday night was about healthcare spending. Some data here I belatedly added as I ran out of time preparing three different topics in one lecture.


I also used some old data, 2011, 2007, but current numbers should not be too different.


A time series data on number of physicians over 22 years in selected Asian countries.


Many people say that government spending in healthcare is "not enough". Really? These national and local agencies are not small. Public spending in healthcare is big. What makes them "small" perhaps is the huge amount of wastes and leakage. Like spending more money on salaries and perks of government personnel and officials who are not providing relevant or useful service delivery.


Universal healthcare (UHC) in the Philippines.


An example of wastes and leakage in the government health delivery system.


Private spending in health, at least in the corporate and pharma sector.


Average life expectancy of people anywhere in the planet is rising. Many people do not recognize this and only point out the pessimistic and negative scenario.


I made the following concluding notes.

* Reduce taxes on medicines and healthcare. import tax 1-5% + VAT 12% + local government taxes.

* Encourage, invite more players in pharma (innovators and generics), drugstores, hospitals. Competition from more players is often the best insurance to bring down prices and improve products and  services quality.

* Focus on fighting substandard, fake medicines, in partnership with civil society. Protect the public via quality control, not drug price control,

* Do not re-centralize healtcare, allow decentralization and competition among LGUs, among private health  insurance, drugstores, hospitals, pharma.

The 15-slides presentation is available in  my slideshare account.
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