Financing for Health as an Investment

The WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All has recently published its landmark report charts route for reorienting economies to deliver health for all. Contemporary structure of most national economies is yielding poor, unequal health outcomes by design. Amongst the leading UN multilateral agencies, there is a growing perception that Health must be seen as a long-term investment, not as a short-term cost. It appears that solid body of seminal evidence confirms that opportunity costs of inaction – not investing in health – exceeds many times the cost of action. By avoiding healthcare investing of a scale, national health systems end up spending more on all the socioeconomic boomerang effects resulting from an unhealthy population. Michael Grossman’s postulate of “human capital” – as an input or by-product of economic growth, theoretically introduced 1972, is one of the many facets of this challenge. Mainstream economics mostly considers the purpose of investing in health to be an increase of GDP and overall economic productivity. The new WHO paradigm shift suggests that Health for All must be the ultimate goal of economic activity. This would mean a fundamental change of how value in health and wellbeing are produced and distributed across society. In real-world circumstances such effort relies on evolving perception of financing for health from an expenditure to an investment. Healthcare reimbursement authorities and Health Technology Agencies worldwide continue to focus on maximizing value for money within a given health budget through narrowly understood efficiency gains. Proposed broadened WHO approach could open up new opportunities towards creating national economies designed to deliver Health for All. This complex cascade of health policy challenges alongside ongoing legislative evolution is shared by wealthy OECD societies and LMICs nations of the Global South alike. We would welcome an array of original research studies, reviews, perspective pieces from all involved parties revealing the hidden obstacles and opportunities of Health for All concept applied to regional and national health systems in years to come.