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Defining a Health Benefits Package: What Are the Necessary Processes?

2016

There is immense interest worldwide in the notion of universal health coverage. A major policy focus in moving toward universal health coverage has been on the key policy question: what services should be made available and under what conditions?

This article focuses on how a feasible set of universal health coverage services can be explicitly defined to create what is commonly known as a “health benefits package”, a set of services that can be feasibly financed and provided under the actual circumstances in which a given country finds itself. The authors explain why an explicit statement of the health benefits package is important and then describe a framework that includes ten core elements that are necessary if a coherent and sustainable process for setting the package is to be established.

 

Source:

Glassman A, Giedion U, Sakuma Y et al. Defining a Health Benefits Package: What Are the Necessary Processes? Health Systems & Reform 2016; 2 (1): 39-50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23288604.2016.1124171