Staying the Course: Reflections on the Progress and Challenges of the UHC Law in the Philippines.

The Philippine Universal Health Care (UHC) law enacted in 2019 aimed to address entrenched health system challenges to achieving equitable access to quality health care. This commentary discusses the progress in its implementation to meet its objectives. Some of these health system challenges include overlapping financing roles; weak incentives for integrating health services across local government units (LGUs), the inclusion of the private sector in networks of care, and fragmented primary health care services.

Reconciling devolution with health financing and public financial management: challenges and policy options for the health sector.

The interplay between devolution, health financing and public financial management processes in health-or the lack of coherence between them-can have profound implications for a country's progress towards universal health coverage. This paper explores this relationship in seven Asian and African countries (Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, Indonesia and the Philippines), highlighting challenges and suggesting policy solutions. First, subnational governments rely heavily on transfers from central governments, and most are not required to allocate a minimum share of their budget to health.