A: Health insurance is only a way to cover health care costs.
Governments wishing to ensure that their populations have access to health services are keen to provide them with social health protection - through a cost-effective insurance system or a government-funded program that enables them to access basic health services without risk of distress or severe financial distress.
Governments wishing to ensure that their populations have access to health services are keen to provide them with social health protection - through a cost-effective insurance system or a government-funded program that enables them to access basic health services without risk of distress or severe financial distress.
The approaches to social health protection differ in different countries, but common to all countries in this area is a system called risk pooling. This system enables a wide range of people to share the risk of becoming ill and resort to expensive care. This means that funds for health care are collected through prepayment and managed in such a way as to ensure that all members of the group will bear the cost of health care in the event of illness, rather than assuming individual costs.
In that system, healthy people, who need only limited health care, continue to fund sick people who rely more heavily on available health resources.
The risk pooling system can be managed in two ways:
1. Tax-based health financing: The government uses income from public taxes to finance health-care services. All people have the right to benefit from such services; therefore coverage is comprehensive.
2. Social health insurance: Health care contributions are collected from workers, self-employed, institutions and government. These funds are pooled in a social health insurance fund or funds. Universal coverage can not be achieved through this funding system unless the population pays what it has and if each individual's contribution is determined according to his ability to pay. Most social health insurance systems therefore resort to different sources of funding, and the government pays contributions from people who are unable to pay them.
In some countries, there is a population that benefits from direct coverage through public taxes, while the latter has to pay contributions to a social health insurance fund or other form of health insurance, which may be private.
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