Health financing in the Western Pacific

The goal of health financing policy is to move towards universal health coverage (UHC) by ensuring adequate spending on health at national and local levels, as well as effective allocation of financial resources to different types of public and personal health services. Putting in place proper health financing mechanisms can ensure that different population groups, especially the most vulnerable and high - risk groups, can access care and be protected from catastrophic expenditures and impoverishment due to health payments.

There are three core functions within health financing – collection, pooling and purchasing. Analysing the sources of funding channelled to the health system (collection), risk-pooling to share the burden of health costs through cross-subsidization (pooling), and the usage of different types of payment mechanisms (purchasing) can provide insights on the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of the health system in moving towards UHC. This information can help support the budgeting and planning process for countries to optimize their resource allocation.