Universal Health Coverage

Last week I participated in the launch of a new Lancet series on universal health coverage (UHC) in Latin America, which aims to showcase and contextualize how the UHC experience has played out to date in the region. 

The Ebola epidemic has made the entire world aware of the importance of hospitals within a health system and the dearth of hospitals altogether in the hardest-hit counties in West Africa.

I’ve spent a lot of time in international meetings talking about the importance of universal health coverage (UHC), and the technical and practical considerations needed to bring UHC closer to reality.  But missing from these discussions is acknowledgement – if not guidance – ...

Universal health coverage (UHC) is now firmly on the global health agenda, and carries with it the ambitious goal of providing “access to key promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health interventions for all at an affordable cost.”  So where do we start?  A critic...

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published the results of “the Oregon experiment” based on the 2008 US Medicaid program expansion in Oregon. The study is one of very few randomized control trials on publicly-subsidized health insurance that exists to guide health po...

This week the World Health Organization held a major international meeting on universal health coverage (UHC), with Director General Margaret Chan reaffirming her regard for universal coverage “as the single most powerful concept that public health has to offer.” While the term “universal” signals t...