Background Economic protection against the cost of unforeseen ill health has become a global concern as expressed in the 2005 World Health Assembly resolution (WHA58. care financing in this paper. Results Ghana’s health care financing system is generally progressive. The progressivity of health financing is usually driven largely by the overall progressivity of taxes, which account for close to 50% of health care funding. The national health insurance (NHI) levy (part of VAT) is definitely mildly progressive and formal sector NHI payroll deductions will also be progressive. However, informal sector NHI contributions were found to be regressive. Out-of-pocket payments, which account for 45% of funding, are regressive form of health payment to households. Bottom line For Ghana to achieve sufficient economic risk security and obtain general insurance eventually, it needs to increase pre-payment cover to all or any in the casual sector, through financing their efforts completely from taxes perhaps, and address various other issues impacting the expansion SNX-5422 from the National MEDICAL HEALTH INSURANCE. Furthermore, the pre-payment financing pool for healthcare needs to develop therefore budgetary allocation to medical sector could be enhanced. Background Healthcare financing strategies possess been recently provided better priority in worldwide wellness policy analysis and debates [1]. A consensus is normally emerging on the necessity for developing countries to go towards universal insurance through pre-payment funding mechanisms, considering that consumer fees as well as SNX-5422 other immediate payments experienced and continue steadily to have unwanted effects, on poor people and households [2 especially,3]. Consumer costs and direct obligations have an effect on the indegent disproportionately. Unfortunately exemptions which were introduced to attempt to cushion the consequences of consumer fees have didn’t protect the indegent from catastrophic healthcare costs to the idea that 84% of these qualified to receive exemptions in Ghana SNX-5422 hardly ever got them [4]. Proof also implies that getting rid of consumer costs, as some advocate, isn’t a sustainable answer to health care funding. It must be supported by way of a simultaneous upsurge in financing through pre-payment systems [5]. There’s a developing dependence on developing countries as a result, in Africa particularly, to ensure reasonable financing within their wellness systems, and offer universal insurance with financial security because of their populations if they’re to attain the health-related MDG goals by 2015 (that is significantly less than five years apart). That has regarded this want and in its Globe Health Assembly quality WHA58.33 known as on all member state governments to “program the changeover to universal insurance of their people” [6]. Identifying a combination of Rabbit Polyclonal to PIK3C2G health care financing mechanisms that would provide the needed access to health care services for those citizens is best informed by understanding how the burden of health care financing currently falls on different segments of the population. Although there is a commitment to going after a universal health system in Ghana, no assessment of equity in health care financing has been undertaken. To improve equity in health care financing and promote the goal of achieving universal protection, there is a need to measure the degree of progressivity of existing health care financing mechanisms to be able SNX-5422 to set up the relative funding burden on the poor compared with the rich. This will allow us to identify which health care financing strategies are regressive (i.e. place a greater burden on the poor) and which are progressive (i.e. the rich contribute a higher proportion of their income than the poor). SNX-5422 It will therefore provide insights into which financing mechanisms best provide financial safety and promote common protection. The paper therefore seeks to investigate the degree to which paying for health care relates to people’s ability to pay and to investigate.