Making Thailand’s UHC ‘SAFE’ (sustainable,affordable,fair and efficient)

Abstract

Thai UHC has been established through national efforts to learn from international as well as national development of how to build a system-wide financial risk protection for the Thai population while also ensuring effective coverage of health services. One of the key strategic approach is establishing a strategic purchasing organization called national health security office (NHSO) since 2002. Many lesson have been learnt and shared here hoping that they are generic enough to guide actions and policy decisions either for countries starting UHC or those who have had some models going on. For example, a professionally run strategic purchasing body with certain degree of autonomy is key but the needs to harmonize multiple schemes are also challenging, technically as well as politically. The effective use of and support for existing public sector health services systems is another key lesson. The challenge of making the systems sustainable, affordable fair and efficient have been with us since the very beginning and we shares some of the approaches to address this issue to ensure that UHC will be properly supported politically, professionally managed while maintaining a well balanced demand side with the view to ensure that UHC is creating better health and not merely more access to services.