Healthy people equals healthy economy
February 21, 2021“Stay safe and healthy!” This has become the new customary closing in every personal and business message we send every day. This seemingly small gesture of courtesy and sincerity reflects how this global pandemic from Wuhan is changing our very culture and behavior. For every Filipino, or any inhabitant of this planet for that matter, staying healthy has become a conscious comportment that we must strictly observe.
Since 2012, national surveys conducted by Pulse Asia on the “Urgent Personal and National Concerns of Filipinos” have consistently ranked health and avoiding illness as the most “urgent personal concern”. An unexpected diagnosis or a debilitating injury from an accident can plunge the most vulnerable and even the rising middle class into financial ruin that will have long term consequences extending to immediate or even extended family.
This national concern is confirmed by data in the Philippine National Health Accounts released by the Philippine Statistics Authority in October 2019 which revealed household health expenditures were about twice that of government. It was reported that 2018 out-of-pocket expenses increased by 10.5% to approximately P449 billion or 58.6% of total health expenditures. The report said that the country’s Total Health Expenditures at current prices grew by 8.3 percent in 2018 amounting to P799.1 billion from P737.8 billion in 2017. And this was more than 2 years before the pandemic. You can imagine how bad the figures would be when these data are updated.
This is the environment we are in.
The disruptive effects of the ongoing crisis have exposed the weakness of our public health system which the Universal Health Care law is envisioned to solve.
The implementation of a universal health care system benefits the economy. The interlinking dynamics of health and the economy and the disruptive consequences of its imbalance is one of the hardest lessons of this pandemic. This is how critical, and how urgent Universal Health Care is.
A study from KPMG shows well managed investments in health care positively impacts the economy because of the increased productivity of a healthier workforce and increased life expectancy. It shows that for middle income countries which have UHC, increasing the average life expectancy by one year could potentially increase the country’s GDP per capita by 4 percent.
Healthy workers mean fewer down times because of illness. International studies have estimated increasing labor productivity by 20 to 45 percent in the medium to long-term.
With new technologies, Universal Health Care will transform our health institutions and practices. Studies also show that UHC is a viable tool for transforming health outcomes of a population. Actually, the World Health Organization first called on developing countries to implement UHC by 2015. We may be about five years late, but we are about to start.
With UHC we hope to finally realize health care equality and rights, leading to eventually end the risk of medical bankruptcies or the economic catastrophe befalling a family because of a loved one falling victim to a disease or devastating accident.
With UHC we hope to see high standard services in every health care facility of the country.
With UHC we hope to nurture a culture of disease prevention that starts from early childhood to senior care, from vaccination, nutrition, and healthy lifestyle.
With UHC we want early childhood care which is foundational to fostering a skilled population needed for sustaining economic growth.
With UHC we hope to see the harnessing of the best technologies to empower our healthcare institutions with digital solutions for pooled procurement of health technologies to maximize limited funding resources. We believe that the digital transformation of our health ecosystem will ensure transparency, efficiency, and accessibility of healthcare services.
The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines will eventually bring us to herd immunity and restart the sudden stop of what was just a year ago, one of the fastest growing economies of the world. A well implemented UHC will revitalize the private sector to drive our economic recovery by creating jobs and pay the taxes that the government needs to finance public services and invest in priority infrastructure projects.
Very soon, the government will be working on the next budget call for the 2022 National Expenditure Plan. Ensuring that there is adequate funding of all health laws to progressively realize the vision of Universal Health Care will be one of the focuses of UHC Watch.
Moreover, the importance of ensuring adequate appropriations for the fast implementation of the Universal Healthcare Act, the National Integrated Cancer Control Act and all other health laws MUST NOT be overshadowed by the political noise or politicized by political opportunists to serve their interests in the coming national elections.
On behalf of the allied civil society organizations of UHC Watch, we commit to participate as a constructive partner of all health stakeholders. We believe that only thru a whole of society strategy can we move past these unprecedented times and that addressing the health crisis first will be the big push to restarting the stalled engines of our economy.
Only with healthy people can we have a healthy economy.