Reducing out-of-pocket payments for health in order to achieve universal health coverage in Mongolia
Healthcare costs are among the largest barriers to accessing health services and achieving universal health coverage (UHC) in Mongolia. In 2014, 0.7% or 5,681 households in Mongolia experienced catastrophic health expenditures due to out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses, spending more than 40% of their household subsistence income on health care.1 In this blog, I discuss the origins and impacts of these OOP payments, potential policy solutions and their likely impacts, and the challenges that Mongolia is likely to face in tackling OOP expenses in the future. How Mongolia’s health system has evolved since 1990 Since the early 1990s, when Mongolia transitioned to a market economy, the Mongolian health system has undergone a number of healthcare financing reforms, gradually moving away from the centralized, state-controlled “Semashko-style” model. In 1993, Social Health Insurance (SHI)…