Are Free Government Health Services the Best Way to Reach to Poor?
The paper asks whether the pursuit of universal coverage by a wide range of free government services constitutes the most promising approach to meeting the needs of disadvantaged population groups. The response given to that question is probably no...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/09/5589349/free-government-health-services-best-way-reach-poor http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13720 |
| Summary: | The paper asks whether the pursuit of
universal coverage by a wide range of free government
services constitutes the most promising approach to meeting
the needs of disadvantaged population groups. The response
given to that question is probably not. The record to date
points clearly to the danger that the benefits of subsidized
government health services will flow primarily to the
better-off, rather than to the poor for whom the services
are intended. While there is no perfect approach to dealing
with this issue, the record also points to several
approaches that can significantly ameliorate the situation.
Two of them, discussed in the paper, are the adoption of
targeting measures to increase the proportion of benefits
from government expenditures that flow to the poor; and the
development of alternative, self-sustaining service
financing and delivery mechanisms to serve the better-off.
Successful implementation of approaches like these would
allow governments to focus their efforts to achieve
universal free coverage on a limited number of interventions
that are particularly important for poor groups. |
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