In Health Care, Republicans Could Learn From Rwanda<br />Since Ghana began its health care reform in 2003, access has increased from 6.6 percent to<br />38 percent of the population, according to an analysis by researchers at the World Bank.<br />As you keep looking for ways to take away the health insurance of tens of millions of Americans of limited means, the experience of these<br />countries might help you consider alternative approaches to improve the American health care system while still providing access for all.<br />But over the past 15 years or so, Rwanda has built a near-universal health care system<br />that covers more than 90 percent of the population, financed by tax revenue, foreign aid and voluntary premiums scaled by income.<br />In Peru, coverage has increased from about 37 to 62 percent since the start of reforms;<br />in Vietnam, from 16 to 67.5 percent; in Thailand, from 63 to 96 percent.<br />“No country has attained universal population coverage based on a system organized around voluntary prepayment,” the World Bank researchers wrote.<br />Republicans, I know Rwanda — with its poverty, illiteracy and autocratic government — is not in the same peer group as the United States.
