COVID-19 pandemic and fiscal sustainability

Abstract

The article deals with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the financing of the health care system, and the main challenges to the stability of the financial mechanisms of post-pandemic health care development have been identified. The author substantiates the peculiarities of the crisis of health care financing in the conditions of the current pandemic, further economic recession and decreased fiscal sustainability. The global practice of fiscal response to the manifestations of the COVID-19 pandemic has been systematized and the volumes of the corresponding financing in the countries with insurance and budgetary systems of health care financing have been estimated. The article identifies mechanisms for the transformation and expansion of the fiscal space in the context of expanded financing of the growing need for medical care in the face of new epidemic risks in different countries. Most often, the expansion of a country's fiscal space is carried out by: redistributing the existing amount of government expenditure for health care and redirecting funding flows from financing certain types of medical care to financing programs to overcome and combat COVID-19; changes in the priority of government health expenditure to combat COVID-19 compared to other budget expenditures on the social sphere and economic development; and using national reserve funds and emergency funds. It has been found that in the field of health care, the vast majority of countries have reduced the economic and territorial deprivation of all population groups in access to the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. The author emphasizes the weaknesses of insurance based and decentralized health financing mechanisms to respond to the growing need for health care and financial stability during the pandemic. Substantiated the necessity to expand the fiscal space needed to cover the fiscal gap in Ukraine caused by the requirement to increase health care financing in response