PHS 206- Health Care Financing

This unit will explain sources of health care financing and the policies guiding resource allocation. It will also describe various sources of health care financing and the health expenditure patterns. Health systems are responsible for not only improving the health of individuals, but also protecting them against the financial costs of disease and morbidity. One of the challenges faced by governments is to reduce the burden of out-of-pocket (OOP) healthcare payments for their people by providing subsidies and extending prepaid programs. OOP payment is the weakest and most unfair payment approach for health care. From the perspective of protection against risk, this approach is considered to be the worst possible form of healthcare financing. OOP payments can negatively affect access to health services, expose households to catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) and also slow the progress of universal healthcare coverage. The bottlenecks in health financing mechanisms in Nigeria constitute the weak coordinated pooling mechanisms that give rise to poor strategic purchasing, and unsustainable risk pools