A good health system, above all, contributes to good health. But it is not always satisfactory
to protect or improve the average health of the population, if at the same time inequality
worsens or remains high because the gain accrues disproportionately to those already
enjoying better health. The health system also has the responsibility to try to reduce inequalities
by preferentially improving the health of the worse-off, wherever these inequalities
are caused by conditions amenable to intervention. The objective of good health is
really twofold: the best attainable average level – goodness – and the smallest feasible differences
among individuals and groups – fairness. A gain in either one of these, with no change
in the other, constitutes an improvement, but the two may be in conflict. The logic is somewhat
parallel to that concerning the distribution of income in a population. It is desirable to
raise the average level, to reduce inequality, or both, and sometimes to judge the relative
values of one and the other goal (with the difference that there is no argument for taking
health away from anyone – health, unlike income or nonhuman assets, cannot be directly
redistributed).
The distinction between the overall level and how it is distributed in the population also
applies to responsiveness. Goodness means the system responds well on average to what
people expect of it, with respect to its non-health aspects. Fairness means that it responds
equally well to everyone, without discrimination or differences in how people are treated.
The distribution of responsiveness matters, just as the distribution of health does. Either
one is valuable by itself.
In contrast to the objectives of good health and responsiveness, there is no overall notion
of goodness related to financing. There are good and bad ways to raise the resources
for a health system, of course, but they are more or less good primarily as they affect how
fairly the financial burden is shared. Fair financing, as the name suggests, is concerned only
with distribution. It is not related to the total resource bill, nor to how the funds are used.
While it is unambiguously preferable to have better health or a higher level of responsiveness,
it is not always better to spend more on health because at high levels of expenditure
there may be little additional health gain from more resources. The objectives of the health
system do not include any particular level of total spending, either absolutely or relative to
income. This is because, at all levels of spending, the resources devoted to health have
competing uses, and it is a social choice – with no correct answer – how much to allocate to
the health system. Nonetheless there is probably a minimum level of expenditure required
to provide a whole population with a handful of the most cost-effective services, and many
poor countries are currently spending too little even to assure that (4).
In countries where most health financing is private, and is largely out of pocket, no one
makes this choice overall; it results from millions of individual decisions. As the level of
prepayment rises, there are fewer and larger decisions, because spending is more and more
determined by the policies and budgets of public entities and insurance funds. The public
budget decision has the greatest effect in high income countries where most funding is
government controlled or mandated, but in all countries it is one of the most basic public
decisions. It is something that can be directly chosen, as the level of health outcome or of
responsiveness cannot be.