GHW Podcast Episode 7: Universal Health Coverage

The final episode of the GHW6 podcast series features Remco Van de Pas and Sulakshana Nandi, two long-standing PHM members who are very active in PHM’s thematic circle on health systems. They provide an up-to-date analysis of the global state of the debates around Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and Primary Health Care (PHC), finding that UHC is everywhere and PHC has become stuck in the margins. Also, they warn against the market rhetoric that suffuses health systems reform, together with the rising global policy discourse on engaging with the private health sector. The UHC focus on financing and its agnosticism over any downside to increasing the role of private providers (but always with a backstop of state funding support) has led to less than impressive or health equitable UHC implementation. The health future must be public; but it is the activist public that needs to make it so.