Macroeconomic Effects of Financing Universal Health Coverage in Armenia
Armenia has made significant progress in improving population health outcomes over the past two decades. However, essential health care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is underutilized in part due to the cost of access. Armenia has also commit...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/121511623137773847/Macroeconomic-Effects-of-Financing-Universal-Health-Coverage-in-Armenia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35688 |
| Summary: | Armenia has made significant progress in
improving population health outcomes over the past two
decades. However, essential health care for non-communicable
diseases (NCDs) is underutilized in part due to the cost of
access. Armenia has also committed as a signatory to the
Sustainable Development Goals, to making progress towards
Universal Health Coverage (UHC). This commitment involves
guaranteeing access to essential health care for all its
citizens. The Ministry of Health (MoH) has developed a
concept note for the introduction for Universal Health
Insurance that proposes to mobilize additional revenue
through payroll taxes or higher budgetary allocations to the
sector. However, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) has noted
that revenue mobilization options should ideally demonstrate
positive returns in terms of economic growth and employment.
Therefore, at the request of the MoH, the World Bank has
modeled the macroeconomic impacts of options to increase
domestic resource mobilization to finance universal access
to essential health services in the basic benefits package.
The analysis assumes that through UHC reforms that mobilize
additional public spending, the government would cover the
cost of ninety-five percent of household needs for health
care from 2021 to 2050, and that the increase in the demand
for care will be supported by improvements in supply-side
efficiency. The results suggest that increasing direct taxes
is better than increasing indirect taxes as the former are
less distortionary and cause smaller allocative inefficiencies. |
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