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Should a Country Follow WHO’s Guidelines on the Pathway to Universal Health Coverage? A Case Illustration with the Chinese Healthcare System

Should a Country Follow WHO’s Guidelines on the Pathway to Universal Health Coverage? A Case... The WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage published a comprehensive report titled “Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage” detailing strategies that countries should adopt when moving towards providing healthcare coverage to the entire population. The report provides detailed guidelines on how to expand coverage to more people, what services should be covered, and how to prioritize these healthcare resources in achieving universal healthcare coverage (UHC). The main goal of this WHO report is to ensure fair and equitable access for all population groups within a country during the implementation of UHC. In principle, the group’s approach is sound and fair, but we argue that each country must take into account its own unique situations in designing a pathway towards UHC. China has achieved near UHC but did so by an approach that would have been deemed completely unacceptable based on this group’s recommendations. In this article, we provide a brief review of the Chinese healthcare system and argue that the implementation of the recommendations in the report is not always feasible. We argue that there are alternate pathways towards achieving UHC and there are good reasons for China’s departure from the approach outlined by the WHO report. Nevertheless, we acknowledge substantial inequities still exist for various segments of the population and among the diverse areas of China in accessing healthcare services and make suggestions on how to reduce such inequities within the system. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Asian Bioethics Review Springer Journals

Should a Country Follow WHO’s Guidelines on the Pathway to Universal Health Coverage? A Case Illustration with the Chinese Healthcare System

Wang, Chunshui; Ng, Vincent; Lie, Reidar
Asian Bioethics Review , Volume 10 (3) – Jun 27, 2018
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References (40)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by National University of Singapore and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
Subject
Philosophy; Bioethics; Ethics; Medical Law; Public Health; Biomedicine, general; Health Administration
ISSN
1793-8759
eISSN
1793-9453
DOI
10.1007/s41649-018-0052-1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage published a comprehensive report titled “Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage” detailing strategies that countries should adopt when moving towards providing healthcare coverage to the entire population. The report provides detailed guidelines on how to expand coverage to more people, what services should be covered, and how to prioritize these healthcare resources in achieving universal healthcare coverage (UHC). The main goal of this WHO report is to ensure fair and equitable access for all population groups within a country during the implementation of UHC. In principle, the group’s approach is sound and fair, but we argue that each country must take into account its own unique situations in designing a pathway towards UHC. China has achieved near UHC but did so by an approach that would have been deemed completely unacceptable based on this group’s recommendations. In this article, we provide a brief review of the Chinese healthcare system and argue that the implementation of the recommendations in the report is not always feasible. We argue that there are alternate pathways towards achieving UHC and there are good reasons for China’s departure from the approach outlined by the WHO report. Nevertheless, we acknowledge substantial inequities still exist for various segments of the population and among the diverse areas of China in accessing healthcare services and make suggestions on how to reduce such inequities within the system.

Journal

Asian Bioethics Review – Springer Journals

Published: Jun 27, 2018

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