Health care funding's balancing act

SINGAPORE - Asian governments need to find the right balance of public and private sector funding for health care financing to avoid the mistakes of the American and European systems.

So said several experts at the presentation of an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report yesterday that found Asia's health care systems not keeping pace with the region's rapidly expanding economy.

The challenges are many: Heart disease is a major cause of death in the 11 countries the report covered, and the threat of infectious diseases remain. The report also found that a large percentage of health care is funded by private payments, leading to great disparity in access to treatment in countries such as India and Vietnam.

Health care systems will also need to change quickly to deal with rapidly ageing populations, said Mr Charles Goddard, EIU's Asia-Pacific editorial director.

And while some countries want to follow Singapore's health care funding model, the question is how transferable the model to bigger countries with a varied geographical landscape is, said Associate Professor Phua Kai-Hong.

The health policy and management don from the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said there is no single model for the public-private split of health care funding and provision. Depending solely on insurance will not work. Insurance should cover only catastrophic illnesses, and personal savings should be encouraged.

"Unfortunately many governments look upon insurance to solve all their problems. So, they cover everything under the sun and there's not enough," he said.

Asian countries should also do more in disease prevention in order to "bend the cost curve" and deliver sustainability - an area the United States and Europe have "failed miserably" in, said Mr Arthur Higgins, chairman of pharmaceutical company Bayer Healthcare's executive committee.

Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan will give the opening keynote address at the EIU's Healthcare in Asia conference today.

[SOURCE: http://www.todayonline.com]