SEATTLE - An estimated 5.4 billion people globally are expected to be covered under some form of universal health care (UHC) by 2030, up from 4.3 billion in 2015, but far below the related target in United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3, according to a new scientific study.
The study finds that, while health spending is expected to rise over the coming decades, it is likely to continue constraining efforts to achieve universal health coverage. The analysis was conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and published today in the international medical journal The Lancet .
"Our analysis emphasizes the need to ensure sufficient health financing for UHC in the era of the UN Sustainable Development Goals," said Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME's director. "We identified the correlation that a 10 percent increase of pooled resources, such as government health spending, prepaid private spending, and development assistance for health, equates to a 1.4 percent increase in universal health coverage."
Moreover, the study finds global health spending is expected to double over the next 20 years, from US$10 trillion in 2015 to $20 trillion in 2040; spending per person is expected to increase the most in middle-income countries.
It is estimated that per-person health spending in 2040 would range from a low of $40 in Central African Republic to $16,362 in the United States. Among four income groups, the breakdown is $8,666 per capita for high-income, $2,670 for upper-middle-income, $714 for lower-middle-income, and $190 for low-income countries in 2040.
Country-specific pooled spending levels are projected to range from $30 to $14,876 per person. The study notes this "magnitude of disparity could hinder progress on UHC for nations most in need."
Other findings include:
"Tracking countries' pooled resources for health, and understanding how resource trends can affect health service coverage, are important contributions to policy development and budgeting processes related to UHC," said IHME's Dr. Joseph Dieleman, lead author of the study, entitled, "Trends in future health financing and coverage: future health spending and universal health coverage in 188 countries, 2016-2040."
Dieleman, Murray, and IHME researchers worked with the organization's health financing collaborative network, a group of 256 researchers in 63 countries.
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Media contacts:
IHME: Kelly Bienhoff, +1-206-897-2884 (office); +1-913-302-3817 (mobile); kbien@uw.edu
IHME: Dean Owen, +1-206-897-2858 (office; +1-206-434-5630 (mobile); dean1227@uw.edu
About the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent global health research organization at the University of Washington that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world's most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them. IHME makes this information widely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to improve population health.
Access to data visualizations: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/fgh/
Access to the study published in JAMA : http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)30697-4/fulltext
The Lancet