Economic evaluation of health care system in Nigeria: its challenges and prospects

Universal health coverage is a situation where everyone can access the health services they need without suffering financial hardship paying for them. This implies that there is some sort of risk pooling mechanism (e.g. insurance) and that the poorest are supported with their health expenses. 60% of all health spending is financed directly by households without insurance. This is way above the 15% threshold beyond which household risk being pushed into poverty by health care expenses. This paper thus reviewed the economic aspect of health care system: Its challenges and prospects in Nigeria. The results of this review showed that health care financing is worse hit especially in the poor continent where health care faces serious problem of acceptability with out-of-pocket expenditure accounting for over 70% of total private health expenditure is enough to dent the little progress of the health system made. It is therefore important that the government is responsible for the largest share of spending on health, rather than individuals, otherwise the poor may be denied access to healthcare and others may be pushed into poverty through expenditure on health.