BACKGROUND :

Out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) on healthcare can push households into poverty and in the Southeast Asia Region, more than 65 million people have been impoverished on its account. Reducing OOPE of households has therefore been at the forefront of discussions on achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which is one of the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Over the last two decades, several countries have experimented with health financing schemes to reduce the barriers in accessing healthcare: in 2012, Myanmar introduced two health financing schemes, the Hospital Equity Fund (HEF) and the Maternal and Child Healthcare Scheme (MCHVS), as part of the Gavi Health Systems Strengthening Support (HSS) to alleviate financial costs of emergency, maternal and child health issues; in India, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) was initiated at the national level to provide financial protection to the poor and vulnerable in the unorganized sector, with several states implementing the scheme; in Thailand, the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS) extended public insurance coverage to the entire population; and Vietnam implemented a Social Health Insurance Scheme to cover more than ninety percent of its population.