The health system differs from other social systems such as education, and from the
markets for most consumer goods and services, in two ways which make the goals of fair
financing and responsiveness particularly significant. One is that health care can be catastrophically
costly. Much of the need for care is unpredictable, so it is vital for people to be
protected from having to choose between financial ruin and loss of health. Mechanisms for
sharing risk and providing financial protection are more important even than in other cases
where people buy insurance, as for physical assets like homes or vehicles, or against the
financial risk to the family of a breadwinner dying young. The other peculiarity of health is
that illness itself, and medical care as well, can threaten people’s dignity and their ability to
control what happens to them more than most other events to which they are exposed.
Among other things, responsiveness means reducing the damage to one’s dignity and autonomy,
and the fear and shame that sickness often brings with it.
Systems are often charged to be affordable, equitable, accessible, sustainable, of good
quality, and perhaps to have many other virtues as well. However, desiderata such as accessibility
are really a means to an end; they are instrumental rather than final goals. The more
accessible a system is, the more people should utilize it to improve their health. In contrast,
the goals of health, fair financing, and responsiveness are each intrinsically valuable. Raising
the achievement of any goal or combination of goals, without lowering the attainment
of another, represents an improvement. So if the achievement of these goals can be measured,
then instrumental goals such as accessibility become unnecessary as proxy measures
of overall performance; they are relevant rather as explanations of good or bad outcomes.
It is certainly true that financing that is more fairly distributed may contribute to better
health, by reducing the risk that people who need care do not get it because it would cost
too much, or that paying for health care leaves them impoverished and exposed to more
health problems. And a system that is more responsive to what people want and expect can
also make for better health, because potential patients are more likely to utilize care if they
anticipate being treated well. Both goals therefore are partly instrumental, in that they promote
improvements in health status. But they would be valuable even if that did not happen.
That is, paying equitably for the system is a good thing in itself. So is assuring that
people are treated promptly, with respect for their dignity and their wishes, and that patients
receive adequate physical and affective support while undergoing treatment. The
three goals are separable, as is often shown by people’s unhappiness with a system even
when the health outcomes are satisfactory.
Comparing how health systems perform means looking at what they achieve and at
what they do – how they carry out certain functions – in order to achieve anything (2). These
functions could be classified and related to system objectives in many different ways. For
example, the “Public health in the Americas” initiative led by the Pan American Health
Organization describes 12 different “essential functions”, and proposes between three and
six sub-functions for each one (3). Many of these functions correspond to the task of stewardship
which this report emphasizes, others to service provision and to resource generation.
The four functions described in this chapter embrace these and other more specific
activities. Figure 2.1 indicates how these functions – delivering personal and non-personal
health services; raising, pooling and allocating the revenues to purchase those services;
investing in people, buildings and equipment; and acting as the overall stewards of the
resources, powers and expectations entrusted to them – are related to one another and to
the objectives of the system. Stewardship occupies a special place because it involves oversight
of all the other functions, and has direct or indirect effects on all the outcomes. Comparing
the way these functions are actually carried out provides a basis for understanding
How Well do Health Systems Perform? 25
performance variations over time and among countries. Some evidence about these functions,
and how they influence the attainment of the fundamental objectives in different
health systems, is examined in the next four chapters.
In the view of most people, the health system is simply those providers and organizations
which deliver personal medical services. Defining the health system more broadly
means that the people and organizations which deliver medical care are not the whole
system; rather, they exercise one of the principal functions of the system. They also share,
sometimes appropriately and sometimes less so, in the other functions of financing, investment
and stewardship. The question of who should undertake which functions is one of
the crucial issues treated in later chapters.
It is common to describe the struggle for good health in quasi-military terms, to talk of
“fighting” malaria or AIDS, to refer to a “campaign” of immunization or the “conquest” of
smallpox, to “free” a population or a geographical area of some disease, to worry about the
“arms race” that constantly occurs between pathogens and the drugs to hold them in check,
to hope for a “silver bullet” against cancer or diabetes. In those terms, the providers of direct
health services – whether aimed at individuals, communities or the environment – can be
considered the front-line troops defending society against illness. But just as with an army,
the health system must be much more than the soldiers in the field if it is to win any battles.
Behind them is an entire apparatus to ensure that the fighters are adequately trained, informed,
financed, supplied, inspired and led. It is also crucial to treat decently the population
they are supposed to protect, to teach the “civilians” in the struggle how to defend
themselves and their families, and to share equitably the burden of financing the war.
Unless those functions are properly carried out, firepower will be much less effective
than it might be, and casualties will be higher. The emphasis here on overall results and on
the functions more distant from the front line does not mean any denigration of the importance
of disease control. It means rather to step back and consider what it is that the system
as a whole is trying to do, and how well it is succeeding. Success means, among other
things, more effective control of diseases, through better performance.