Working paper: Costing for universal health coverage

Constructing realistic scenarios of the costs of healthcare is a vital part of a country’s strategy to meet international goals on achieving universal healthcare coverage (UHC). In 2010, the World Health Report estimated that a low-income country would need to spend around $60 per capita by 2015 to ensure a health system capable of providing for current and emerging healthcare needs. Estimates increase substantially in countries with higher input costs (e.g. salaries) and where the disease burden is already concentrated on the more expensive-to-treat non-communicable diseases.

This paper summarises our experience of conducting costing analyses across a number of countries, and the issues that arose which are of relevance to future attempts to cost UHC.