Honourable Secretary of Health, Dr OnaDistinguished Secretaries and Under Secretaries
Congressmen and Women
Governors and MayorLadies and Gentlemen
Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to this important Forum.
To have so many representatives from across political life and from so many different sectors makes this a truly unique meeting. I sense that this will be a historical event in the future of universal health insurance in the Philippines and thank you once again for the opportunity to participate today.
This meeting is about financing – but I am not going to speak much about money. This meeting is also about health – however I am not likely to mention a great deal about health either. This may come as a surprise to all of you. But based on my 30 years of working on health sector development and health financing I know that universal health insurance is much more than just money or health.
Universal health insurance is about ensuring that every person in society, no matter how rich or how poor, is free from the fear of financial ruin if they or a family member becomes ill. It is fundamental to a country's economic development and to building a secure society.
Key to economic development, essential to security - these ideals probably sound far more grand than the health benefits you probably expected me to highlight as reasons to promote universal health insurance coverage.
Without doubt, expanding health insurance to cover everyone in society will bring great health benefits. These will include:
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improvements antenatal and maternal care and a better start in life form many children
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increased prevention and early detection of disease
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more access to care and treatment especially for those with chronic and debilitating illnesses.
But it will also bring far greater benefits.
From my experience in the Republic of Korea where I was involved in health reform and the establishment of universal health insurance for 30 years, I have seen for myself the benefits of universal health insurance. Increased social solidarity, increased economic growth and increased individual well being.
Without healthy workers, no industry can be profitable. For a country to grow, it must be able to walk on two legs. One leg is health, the other is development.
Without one leg or the other a country will limp. The Philippines deserves to be able to run.
The Philippines is a country with immense potential and a country that I have grown very fond of. The Philippines has everything in place to be able to achieve universal health insurance coverage. You already have a social health insurance system that covers half of your population. You already have a health system that can deliver a reasonable level of health care in most parts of the country. You already have political commitment at the highest level in the form of the Aquino health Agenda.
And, most importantly, you, some of the most influential leaders in the country, are gathered here today to discuss how to move this. With your wholehearted political commitment, the Philippines will be in an enviable position. You need only to give a final push to achieve something that will produce benefits that go far beyond the health sector.
A final push is needed to reduce the current high level of co-payment so that the system is truly accessible.
And a final push is needed to get everyone enrolled. Half of your population are now insured – but the other half, including some of the most vulnerable in this society, are not.
This final push, though, will need to be supported by three critical investments. These investments will not necessarily be very expensive, but if they do not occur, they will likely cause you significant problems in the future.
Firstly, insuring everyone in the country means that you will have to make sure that the millions and millions of financial transactions that are necessary to keep the system flowing such as collecting contributions and paying health care providers are well managed.
Public trust needs to be maintained if contributions are to continue. And money needs to flow quickly if it is to benefit those who need it the most. Your final push must include investments in financial systems that are robust enough to cope with this volume of work. And investments in adequate oversight and governance mechanisms are needed to protect what will soon become a National Treasure.
Secondly, investments will need to be made to develop innovative payment systems to encourage patients to become prudent buyers and health care providers to be productive and efficient suppliers.
The third area for attention in this final push will be to ensure that patients are able to access quality health care. Investment in health insurance needs to be accompanied by investment in health care systems infrastructure to strengthen health care quality and safety, particularly in PHC services. Without all these investments, universal health insurance coverage will not achieve its full potential.
It might sound daunting but it is all possible. As I said earlier, the Philippines already has much of this in place. When I look back to the late 1970's when I worked in Korea and we introduced universal health insurance, we started at a much lower level than you have here in the Philippines today.
Per capita income in Korea in the late 70's was lower than it is today in the Philippines. Korea at that time had no health insurance system and our health infrastructure was much weaker than yours is today. What we had in common with you though was the political will to do this. The political vision to realise that universal health insurance is vital for growth, for security, for prosperity and for solidarity.
With your support and commitment, the Aquino Health Agenda could provides an historic opportunity to achieve universal health insurance coverage. I applaud all those who have committed to this important initiative.
WHO and all its international partners are willing to work with you and provide support to ensure that this can be achieved. I thank you once again for inviting me to speak at this important event today and wish you every success with these efforts in the future.