IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cid/wpfacu/61.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Screening Seguro Popular: The Political Economy of Universal Health Coverage in Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • Jose Carlos R Pueblita

Abstract

Seguro Popularis the most prominent component of the System of Social Protection in Health launched in Mexico in 2003 to provide health services to 52.7 million of uninsured people, mostly the poorest households. After reaching universal enrollment less than a decade from its origin the system faces several challenges, among them insufficient quality of health services threatening the main objectives of the strategy: to provide effective health coverage and reduce out of pocket expenditure. This study analyzes the allocation of resources at state level destined to Seguro Popularand provides a simple model and empirical evidence that support: 1. electoral politics play an important role finding a significant increase in public sector hiring of health workers and infrastructure building when state-level elections take place; 2. parties adopt different allocation strategies according to their constituencies responsiveness to the type of good provided. Finally, it discusses its implications in service quality and raises concerns over the effective impact of Seguro Popular given its current financing and operating structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Jose Carlos R Pueblita, 2013. "Screening Seguro Popular: The Political Economy of Universal Health Coverage in Mexico," CID Working Papers 61, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cid:wpfacu:61
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/publications/fellow_graduate_student_working_papers/61_Pueblita.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electoral cycles; elections; voting; parties; healthcare; state and local government;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cid:wpfacu:61. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chuck McKenney (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.