The main function of health care systems—wherever they are in the world—is to promote health among the country's citizens. In designing and operating
any system, health care leaders aim to satisfy three leading requirements:
ensuring that all people have adequate access to the benefits of health care,
making certain that the system delivers care of consistently high quality, and
achieving all this at a sustainable level of cost.
These three objectives raise a host of complex questions. What constitutes adequate access and quality care? What is sustainable cost? To what extent should market forces be allowed to play a role in managing health care costs, quality, and service? Going back a step, shouldn't health care systems shift their current focus on caring for the sick to a more holistic effort to maintain citizens' health?
The answers to all those questions vary widely, depending on the historical, political, and social context of each national system. But sufficient commonality may exist to construct a universal analytical framework that can help leaders identify reform priorities and then design and implement them effectively.
By focusing on seven key principles that
health care intermediaries can use to affect demand and supply of health care goods and services, MGI provides such a framework.
Launch this report (PDF - 2.78 MB )
The challenge of funding Japan's future health care needs
Health care spending in Japan could double as a proportion of GDP within 30 years, driven by advances in medical technology, growing wealth, and demographic changes. To close the funding gap, policy makers need to consider reforms such as adjusting reimbursement coverage to avoid more wasteful spending and encouraging more private payments without undermining universal coverage.
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Accounting for the cost of health care in the United States
MGI finds that the United States spends $480 billion more on health care than other developed countries and then explores whether this higher level of spending can be attributed to the relative health of the U.S. population or if the U.S. system is intrinsically more expensive.
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