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Information will be the key to successful implementation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2015

Peter Littlejohns  and
Kalipso Chalkidou
Peter Littlejohns*
Affiliation:
Department of Primary Care and Public Health, International and King’s CollegeLondon, UK
Kalipso Chalkidou
Affiliation:
NICE International, King’s College London, UK
*
*Correspondence to: Professor Peter Littlejohns, Professor of Public Health, Department of Primary Care and Public Health, King’s College London, 5th Floor, Capital House, Guy's, SE1 3QD, London, UK. Email: peter.littlejohns@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage [UHC; World Health Organization (WHO), 2014] is to be welcomed because tackling the relationship between cost-effectiveness and fairness has been given too little attention in policy-making. The consensus that universal coverage is a good thing quickly disperses as the concept is translated into working national policies and local delivery processes. As Weale (2014) and Rumbold and Wilson (2014) point out, seeking practical solutions can lead to the re-exploration of previous givens and result in unexpected ethical and philosophical consequences. While the basic premise underlying the discussion on the ethics of resource concurs with the view that equity is always at odds with efficiency, this is not inevitable as the authors of the report point out in their analysis – a view more fully explored by Culyer (2006). The present report is a welcome attempt to reconcile, as countries progress to UHC, ethical norms with the reality of setting priorities, involving what to pay for and under what circumstances.

Type
Special Section
Information
Health Economics, Policy and Law , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 85 - 89
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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