
Agenda | Feb 27,2021
Sep 18 , 2021
By Halima Abate (MD) ( Halima Abate (MD) is a public health professional with over a decade of experience. She can be reached at halimabate@gmail.com. )
Healthcare is expensive. Different factors fuel costs, including rising incidence of chronic conditions, lifestyle choices, increased aging population, liability concerns, obsolete technology and efforts by the healthcare providers to improve profitability. The matter is no different in Ethiopia.
Recently, the Ministry of Health has put in place a fee rate revision payable for medical services provided by the public hospitals. These health cost rises make the healthcare spending for the government painful, and tradeoffs are inevitable such as reducing spending on education or charging citizens more for out of pocket payments. This will have far-ranging consequences as health systems result from a complex mixture of institutions, regulations, conventions, and historical accidents.
Practical considerations often force decision-makers to deviate from the decisions they would make if faced only with the simple efficiency–equity maximisation problem. They have to consider political priorities and institutional constraints. Patients should normally pay the actual unit cost of services for under- or overutilisation not to occur. But there are always difficulties involved in tracking and allocating administrative overhead and other indirect costs to identify the true unit cost of health services.
For those with low incomes, and thus less likely to have health insurance, out-of-pocket spending is the norm. It makes health care unaffordable and inhibits their ability to access care where needed.
None of this takes away from the importance of healthcare nonetheless, which is still critical whether or not people can afford it.
Healthcare is regarded as a basic human need by most people. Accessing health and confronting disease challenges requires action across a range of activities in the health system. Enabling access to healthcare paves a way to obtain health and health-related services with the following three components: physical accessibility (availability of health services with reasonable reach); financial affordability (people’s ability to pay for services without financial hardship), and acceptability (willingness to seek services). Access ultimately ensures universal health coverage, defined as the obtainment of preventive, curative and rehabilitative health and health-related services without incurring financial damage. Though access to health care does not guarantee good health, without such access, health is certain to suffer.
Hence, making improvements in the policy-making and stewardship role of governments; obtaining better access to human resources, drugs, medical equipment, and consumables; and encouraging a greater and deeper engagement of both public and private health care providers of services are crucial.
Great progress has been made in recent years within the health sector of Ethiopia for better access and to secure financial protection. This has contributed to improve not only health outcomes but also educational attainment, poverty alleviation and labour market productivity.
However, although healthcare should be a priority, without clear spending policies and effective payment mechanisms, the poor and other disadvantaged groups often get left out. Unfortunately, patients needs are often not translated into public policies.
Ministries of health such as our own, with respect to raising revenues for their health systems, explain how decisions on revenue-raising policy have an impact on universal health coverage. This is further undermined by international agencies that have been reducing financial support as a result of the recent downward trend in their own resources. Thus, a stable flow of funds to the health sector is critical to avoid disruptions in service delivery. Ensuring funds are raised in the most efficient way is also an important consideration.
Affording healthcare is a priority for both the insured and uninsured people. Beyond this, all health insurance systems have mechanisms for collecting and pooling revenues, spreading risk, and purchasing health services. Organising health insurance system with equity, efficiency and organisation in mind is fundamental in health care delivery system.
Through progressive financing arrangements, such as insurance systems, the government can subsidise the costs of health care for low-income individuals. The concept of national health insurance rests on the beliefs that everyone should contribute to finance health care and everyone benefits.
Yet progress is possible on a variety of fronts. This is particularly true in the area of e-procurement, which can make procedures more transparent, promote higher levels of participation, make it easier to track down anomalies, and generate data more efficiently. There is a clear need for further work to examine what methods are most effective in expanding access to essential care among the poor.
The proliferation of community-based health insurance schemes theoretically offers a way of addressing demand-side barriers into the benefit package. Yet, only one of the recent reviews of community schemes mentions that those costs cover a broad range of benefits which interact with existing health care programs.
The government should re-think its priorities to serve all income groups with the proper allocation of health service budgets instead of merely hiking prices.
PUBLISHED ON
Sep 18,2021 [ VOL
22 , NO
1116]
Agenda | Feb 27,2021
View From Arada | Apr 17,2020
View From Arada | Jul 02,2022
Agenda | Dec 04,2021
Films Review | Nov 30,2019
Editorial | Jun 05,2021
Fortune News | Aug 21,2021
Fortune News | Dec 05,2020
Agenda | Aug 08,2020
Fortune News | Jun 01,2019
Photo Gallery | 64369 Views | May 06,2019
Photo Gallery | 56227 Views | Apr 26,2019
Fortune News | 51032 Views | Jul 18,2020
Fortune News | 50641 Views | Sep 01,2021
Dec 24 , 2022
Biniam Mikru heads the department of cabinet affairs under Mayor Adanech Abiebie. But...
Jul 2 , 2022 . By RUTH TAYE
On a rainy afternoon last week, a coffee processing facility in the capital's Akaki-Qality District was abuzz with activ...
Nov 27 , 2021
Against my will, I have witnessed the most terrible defeat of reason and the most sa...
Nov 13 , 2021
Plans and reality do not always gel. They rarely do in a fast-moving world. Every act...
Jan 28 , 2023
It is not common to see an appointment for a senior federal government office stir de...
Jan 21 , 2023
Eyob Tekalign, state minister for Finance, took to social media platforms last week t...
Jan 14 , 2023
The longing for normalcy and a semblance of individual and collective security in Eth...
Jan 7 , 2023
The hallmark of Ethiopia's contemporary leaders could be a fascination with grandeur...
Jan 28 , 2023
In what has become common in the past four years, a new round of nominations was put before Parliament last week. These nominations by the P...
Jan 28 , 2023 . By BERSABEH GEBRE
Aklilu Wubet of Wegagen Bank and his executives had a lot to celebrate when they met rather anxious share...
The Oromia Public Enterprise is edging closer to bagging Ayka Addis Textile Factory for 1.82 billion Br....
Jan 28 , 2023 . By EMMANUEL JORGE
Last week saw an uncharacteristically polemical moment after parliamentarians questioned three nominees o...