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Financing Schemes of Health Care Services

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Who pays for Health Care?

Financing schemes for health care are the arrangements through which people pay for and obtain health services. There are three main categories of financing scheme: Government & compulsory schemes (HF.1), Voluntary health care schemes (HF.2) and Direct payments by households or Household out-of-pocket (HF.3). Further details are available in the background notes.

Most expenditure on health (74%) was financed by government, while voluntary health contributions, which are predominantly private health insurance, funded 14% and the remaining 12% was paid for by household out-of-pocket payments. The share of spending between the classification groups has changed very little over time (see Figure 2.1).

There was a rise of 24% in health spending by government between 2014 and 2018. Private health insurance payments for health care grew by 12% in the 5 year time frame and there was very little change in household out-of-pocket expenditure over this period, (see Figure 2.2 and Table 2.1).

X-axis labelGovernmentVoluntary PaymentsHousehold Out of Pocket
201413386.68373496662818.317202811652645.22018573497
201513854.60539074242835.202859239162542.14200710066
201614592.28279273322998.852023318592552.06049684754
201715473.76498747253109.018742486952676.47854674605
201816589.79535276543148.944785317432712.90576824904
Current Health Care Expenditure By Health Care Financing Scheme (% Change between 2014 to 2018)
Government23.9275961187621
Voluntary Health Care Payments11.73138290381
Household Out-of-Pocket2.55878822031813
Table 2.1: Current Health Care Expenditure by Financing Scheme, 2014 to 2018

Where do the Financing Schemes source their revenue?

Table 2.2 shows the revenues of financing schemes for health care. See the Background Notes for more information on this classification.

Most of the revenue for the government's expenditure on health care came through internal government transfers, social insurance contributions (such as PSRI) cover a tiny percentage of government spending on health care (1%). The revenues of the Voluntary Health Contributions are predominantly voluntary prepayments for health insurance premiums, (see Table 2.2).

Table 2.2 : Revenues of Health Care Financing Schemes, 2018


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