According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Universal Health Coverage (UHC) means that everyone has access to a full range of health services – from emergency interventions to palliative care – without financial difficulty.
In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Julia Wendling uses data from CEOWorld Magazine to visualize the countries that have UHC versus those that do not, along with how UHC coverage breaks down in terms of the global population.
The State of Universal Health Coverage in the World
In 2024, 73 of the 195 countries worldwide had UHC, resulting in around 69% of the world’s population having some form of universal healthcare.
Country | UHC? |
---|---|
Albania 🇦🇱 | Yes |
Algeria 🇩🇿 | Yes |
Argentina 🇦🇷 | Yes |
Australia 🇦🇺 | Yes |
Austria 🇦🇹 | Yes |
Bahamas 🇧🇸 | Yes |
Belgium 🇧🇪 | Yes |
Bhutan 🇧🇹 | Yes |
Botswana 🇧🇼 | Yes |
Brazil 🇧🇷 | Yes |
Bulgaria 🇧🇬 | Yes |
Burkina Faso 🇧🇫 | Yes |
Canada 🇨🇦 | Yes |
Chile 🇨🇱 | Yes |
China 🇨🇳 | Yes |
Colombia 🇨🇴 | Yes |
Costa Rica 🇨🇷 | Yes |
Croatia 🇭🇷 | Yes |
Cuba 🇨🇺 | Yes |
Czech Republic 🇨🇿 | Yes |
Denmark 🇩🇰 | Yes |
Egypt 🇪🇬 | Yes |
Finland 🇫🇮 | Yes |
France 🇫🇷 | Yes |
Georgia 🇬🇪 | Yes |
Germany 🇩🇪 | Yes |
Ghana 🇬🇭 | Yes |
Greece 🇬🇷 | Yes |
Hong Kong 🇭🇰 | Yes |
Iceland 🇮🇸 | Yes |
India 🇮🇳 | Yes |
Indonesia 🇮🇩 | Yes |
Ireland 🇮🇪 | Yes |
Israel 🇮🇱 | Yes |
Italy 🇮🇹 | Yes |
Japan 🇯🇵 | Yes |
Kuwait 🇰🇼 | Yes |
Liechtenstein 🇱🇮 | Yes |
Luxembourg 🇱🇺 | Yes |
Macau 🇲🇴 | Yes |
Malaysia 🇲🇾 | Yes |
Maldives 🇲🇻 | Yes |
Mauritius 🇲🇺 | Yes |
Mexico 🇲🇽 | Yes |
Morocco 🇲🇦 | Yes |
Netherlands 🇳🇱 | Yes |
New Zealand 🇳🇿 | Yes |
North Korea 🇰🇵 | Yes |
Norway 🇳🇴 | Yes |
Pakistan 🇵🇰 | Yes |
Peru 🇵🇪 | Yes |
Philippines 🇵🇭 | Yes |
Poland 🇵🇱 | Yes |
Portugal 🇵🇹 | Yes |
Romania 🇷🇴 | Yes |
Russia 🇷🇺 | Yes |
Rwanda 🇷🇼 | Yes |
Serbia 🇷🇸 | Yes |
Seychelles 🇸🇨 | Yes |
Singapore 🇸🇬 | Yes |
South Africa 🇿🇦 | Yes |
South Korea 🇰🇷 | Yes |
Spain 🇪🇸 | Yes |
Sri Lanka 🇱🇰 | Yes |
Suriname 🇸🇷 | Yes |
Sweden 🇸🇪 | Yes |
Switzerland 🇨🇭 | Yes |
Taiwan 🇹🇼 | Yes |
Thailand 🇹🇭 | Yes |
Trinidad and Tobago 🇹🇹 | Yes |
Tunisia 🇹🇳 | Yes |
Turkey 🇹🇷 | Yes |
United Kingdom 🇬🇧 | Yes |
The United States is the only developed country without health coverage for all of its citizens.
As of 2022, the Census Bureau estimated that only 36.1% of Americans were covered by public health insurance. Private health insurance covered 65.6% of the population. This along with other facts has led the U.S. having the world’s highest healthcare spending figure per capita.
The History of Public Health Coverage
Germany was the first country to establish a social health insurance system. Launched in 1883, the program began by covering only blue-collar workers, then slowly expanded its net of those covered.
The first international declaration underlying the need for adequate health care was the Declaration of Alma-Ata in 1978 at the International Conference on Primary Health Care in 1978. The conference’s target was to achieve global UHC by 2000.
The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion of 1986 also reiterated the “Health for All by the year 2000” goal, ultimately paving the way for more countries to adopt UHC.
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India has free health care?
Bullshit.
If you don’t have the money to pay for sevices?
They toss you into the streets.
Riddle me this… when rich folks around the world need the best, cutting edge, life-saving procedures, why do they invariably come to the USA? And can any other worldly health care system compare to the Mayo system? I thought not.
Canadians who have money go to the U S for serious medical care, that has included many politicians over the decades.
You may be right.
Unfortunately?
They all destroyed their credibility with the pokemon-push.
Goods and Services like healthcare can only be allocated via price or rationing. All Universal Healthcare systems use the rationing model…….elected politicians allocate money to the healthcare budget and faceless unaccountable bureaucrats decide how that money is spent….who gets what care, and when……and usually the When is much longer than in the semi-priced based system in the US. The rest of the world also rides our coattails on innovation…….all the cheap knockoff drugs in Europe were invented here….without that innovation healthcare technology and drugs would slow to a crawl. So while our system is very imperfect, having the idiots from the DMV run the system would much worse. We would have long waits for lifesaving surgeries, or not even offered surgery……..Many times folks in other countries are simply refused care as they are too old, or the care too expensive. Now but what about life expectancy data showing US has lower life expectancy but spends more……..conflating two different issues. Our mortality is driven by non-white populations (black and native Americans) primarily and by a much larger percentage of the US population that eats processed foods, gets no exercise (not even walking like in Europe) and do drugs on a regular basis………our mortality would be even higher without our best in case healthcare system….we are a very unhealthy population (on purpose).
Check number 69……plus it is the most expensive.
Best Healthcare in the World
That’s some in-depth analysis there ……… Uhhhhh …….
Thank you
A lot of people die waiting for “free” health care in Canada. Not the best example I would say.
Where and when in Hades did the imbecilic name “health care” come into the lexicon?
Glory to USA.
I live in Germany, and I am forced under gunpoint to take out expensive health insurance even if I have no income or am pensioner – 600 euros a month it costs – and that is cheapest I can find. The quacks here are useless. Had severe chronic pain in SI joint for 5 years and spent tens of thousands on 10 specialists ( including 2 profs) who all diagnosed me incorrectly. Diagnosed myself correctly – TMS
Migranst and freeloaders do not have to pay.
In UK, also universal health care – there nignogs who take fertility pills in Nigeria fly to UK a month before they give birth to octoplets. A chink who falls ill with serious disease flies to UK form Chinkland for expensive treatment. And guess who pays the bills. The poor English working stiff.
As a freelance I would love to emigrate to USA – still some freedom left
Here me again, sorry I should not use the word nignogs and chinks.
Would only use them on this site LOL
Why is it that all western nations are required to give free healthcare to worthless illegal migrants who bring nothing but crime into their host countries? Citizens have to go broke. I know the answer do you?
Jews
Great.
We have listed the countrie with “free healthcare”
No let’s compare the medical outcome and overall health of these people with “universal” health care coverage.
I’m gonna guess, the poor village hospital in Noonegivesafuck, India, do not receive much real health care.
Universal health care is welfare health care – communist health care. The hard working pay for the others and crap quacks get loads of dosh and get payed despite making mistakes
India’s not as bad as the villages in Africa who are trying to get something “bloodletting” to make patients better…………………..
The Commie subsidized U.S. government healthcare industry doesn’t want or need Universal Health Care…the taxpayers are the cash cow…or victims as the case may be…
My son, who is Canadian, enjoys their public health care system so much he pays a monthly fee for him and his family to be members of a private clinic where he gets private care from private doctors.
But of course, all Canadians really do have alternatives. They can enjoy the public system or choose euthanasia.
I beg to differ … the United States does have ‘universal health care’ — for illegal aliens …
Near the end of the term of President Trump’s predecessor, an illegal alien dropped her anchor baby here … it had severe medical problems that cost We The People more than $500,000 during the infant’s first 30 days of life … and, since it’s apparently now a US Citizen, it’s going to get that care for as long as it lives here … and, of course, since the parents get to live here, too, they’ll get the benefits.
Israel, which WE pay for, incidentally. Also, Ukraine
greece might in theory have such a thing but in practice it’s very different.
on the one hand anyone who isn’t retired, who hasnt kept up paying into the system (an exorbitant 26% of one’s pre-tax income, too!) is ‘uninsured’ after three months , and basically a nonentity to that system (aside from Officially Blessed parasites, illegals , gypsies, and the like. they get endless free shit.).. on the other hand the quality of ‘care’ is so dismal that anyone who can somehow afford to, will seek a private alternative. Even for ‘insured’ people, even critical operations like, say, removing a cancerous tumor, or something, will get scheduled 6 or 8 months in the future. People spend a small fortune bribing those who run the scheduling to bump the queue but that just rearranges the same amount of spaces and even then, youll find cleaner more well paid conditions in the ‘real’ third world. public hospitals are filthy, the physical infrastructure unmaintained and crumbling, the personnel totally understaffed, the doctors are paid peanuts and any who could make it in private practice either here or abroad, does so, with only a few who make enough money in private practice, to basically donate their time for free in public hospitals (surprisingly there are a lot of these examples!) , because the salary of a _surgeon_ for example is about 1300 bucks a month. In the west, even the janitors in the hopsital make more than that and the surgeon is paid at least ten times as much. all consumables and supplies even up to toilet paper, must be paid for on the side because they simply dont exist in the hospital. if you have someone of yours in there youd better plan on spending a lot of time caring for him yourself, even up to you taking his readings when theyre supposed to be taken and recording them on the chart because by the time a nurse makes it going all the rounds it’s hours and hours later.
private care and facilities are by western standards quite affordable and generally decent, on par with the rest of europe generally, but by greek standards is extremely expensive. e.g. two days in hospital plus the preparatory visits, tests at outside testing labs, etc, for a gallbladder removal, ran about 7k for a totally out of pocket cash customer. the standard of care there was as good as youd expect anywhere else.
another example, a birth (natural birth, no complications, no caesearean, no weird drugs, couple days stay which really wasnt needed but the mother was convinced by a ‘wait and see if the baby develops jaundice’ which it didn’t) was total in the ballpark of 4k cash out of pocket, zero insurance of any kind involved. those extra couple days were about 200 bucks a day , part of the 4k or so total. and so anyone who can find the money goes private, but even then the public system is garbage. nonetheless one does wonder where the enormous sums of money go, because the taxes that supposedly go there are enormous even compared to many other EUSSR countries.
that sounds cheap until one remembers that _median_ income in greece is probably under a thousand a month, and daily cost of living not counting things like unplanned hospital visits, just rent and bills and food, is on par with western europe and in many cases more expensive (fuel and energy, most manufactured goods, most supermarket items, are more expensive here than in e.g. germany) and also unemployment is somewhere around 20%.
but anyway to say that greece has ‘universal’ or free public care… is simply false in reality, though in some imaginary theoretical world it might be.
also switzerland doesnt exactly have ‘public’ medical treatment, but rather, they force you to buy insurance. the absolute cheapest (doesnt actually cover jack shit, just covers the legal requirement) is still 200-some a month.