MONET 2030: Foregoing necessary medical care for financial reasons

SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal description

«Ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being for all at all ages is essential to sustainable development. Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers associated with child and maternal mortality. […] However, many more efforts are needed to fully eradicate a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues.»

Swiss target 3.8: Everyone in Switzerland benefits from top-calibre and affordable healthcare without discrimination. Low-threshold preventive services reach all demographics. Living conditions in Switzerland are conducive to good health. There is a decline in the number of people who forgo necessary medical examinations or treatment for financial reasons.

Significance of the indicator
The indicator shows the percentage of the population at risk of poverty aged 16 and over who have forgone necessary medical or dental care for financial reasons. This situation is a reflection of inequality of access to health services. To move in the direction of sustainable development, this percentage must decline.

Help for interpretation
Access to health services can be impeded by various obstacles. In particular, people’s financial situation is a constraining factor that could lead to going without medical care. Dental care should be given particular consideration because unlike basic medical care it is usually not reimbursed by the health insurance company.

International comparability
The indicator does not allow for direct international comparisons as the categories “foregoing medical care” and “forgoing dental care” are combined. At international level, medical care and dental care are considered separately.

Synthesis

Comments: assessment of the indicator from 2015 due to a break in the time series in 2014 and 2015. As the observed evolution falls within the confidence interval, this evolution is not statistically significant and is therefore assessed as unchanged.

The indicator shows the percentage of the population at risk of poverty aged 16 and over who have forgone necessary medical or dental care for financial reasons. A confidence interval of 95% is calculated for these data.

Swiss target 3.8: Everyone in Switzerland benefits from top-calibre and affordable healthcare without discrimination. Low-threshold preventive services reach all demographics. Living conditions in Switzerland are conducive to good health. There is a decline in the number of people who forgo necessary medical examinations or treatment for financial reasons.

International target 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.