Affordable healthcare is not going to happen

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved by the UN General Assembly in 2015, includes 17 global goals (the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs). One of them is “universal health coverage” – that is, the idea that all people will be able to obtain the medical services they need without facing financial hardship that ruins them.How things are progressing in that direction can be judged from the data presented in a World Health Organization publication, Tracking universal health coverage: 2025 global monitoring report.The WHO formulated and tracks two fairly complex indicators, each made up of many smaller ones. The first, the Health Service Coverage Index (SCI), aggregates data across four areas and aspects of healthcare: maternal and child health, infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and the volume and accessibility of medical services. The second, the Financial Hardship Index (FHI), shows the share of the population whose out-of-pocket household spending on healthcare (excluding insurance-based and state-funded medicine) exceeds 40% of the household budget.The WHO report reveals the irony of “sustainable development.” If in 2000-2015 there was global progr...