Health System and Reform In Lebanon

This essay on “The collaborative governance of Lebanon’s health sector” is a well-documented, easily read, review of the transformation of Lebanon’s health care system, over the past two decades. I would like to commend Dr. Wim Vanlerbergh, Dr. Abdel Hay Mechbal and Dr. Nabil Kronfol, who put this together based on evidence, published robust surveys, extensive interviews and mapping of all stakeholders’ positions...

Health spending in Lebanon is growing rapidly and faster than GDP. The current financing and delivery arrangements, extensively described in this book, are responsible for the resulting poor value for money. Reform is needed to adapt the health system with financial constraints and changing demographic and epidemiological profiles, and to produce the desired health outcomes. Lebanon's experience in introducing reform measures within a pluralistic health system, is interesting for many EMR countries, which consider enhancing the private sector role in health care provision and financing. This book provides evidence that, in the absence of proper regulation, the public financing of private services feed the escalation of health expenditures, while private insurance takes full advantage of the weak regulation capability of the public administration. It provides an analysis of the health care market and assesses the impact of the supply and different payment mechanisms on the demand and the cost of medical services.