Question

Use the concepts of equity and efficiency as criteria upon which to comment on the appropriateness of Social Health Insurance as the mode of health care financing?

Answer 1

Answer ) The cost of health care and providing health care services at affordable price is one of the primary objective of government for benefit of society. Social Health Insurance (SHI) is a very common and well discussed form of financing health care expanses based on principle of risk pooling. The SHI creates a pool of health risks and get assistance from individuals, firms, households and the bodies of government to protect people from financial loss for paying health care expenses. This is consider as a relatively fair technique of financing health care cost, although the method is not popular in low-middle-income countries till now. Most of the developing countries depend primarily on tax-funded finance. Generally developed Countries with high per capital income and higher employment rate try to get a large SHI benefit. In many recent sessions of the WHO Committee are discussing on the need of alternative health care financing in member countries within the framework of solidarity and equity. So the model of SHI has high suitability in terms of equity as well as efficiency.