The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a US$300 million loan to improve health-spending efficiency in the Dominican Republic
The IDB says that the purpose of the loan is to help consolidate the social security system coverage and improve health-spending efficiency by expanding the reforms that the country has already been implementing in these sectors.
This loan, the second of two, will continue to boost measures designed to strengthen the pension system and its comprehensive development, including changes in the definition of policies for increasing coverage, strengthening institutions that monitor the system and control evasion, establishing a registry of elderly people living in extreme poverty for the purpose of subsidies, and developing a plan to provide public financial education.
It will also improve the health sector’s efficiency by supporting the enactment of the law creating the National Health Service, an autonomous public entity, implementing Quality Health Policies such as the approval of health service providers and the development of standards for the care of mothers and infants, and the approval of a new catalog of health benefits.
These actions build upon the previous loan, which supported the consolidation of the pension system through changes in policies, improvements in the focus of the benefits and access to information, and institutional strengthening and support for the culture of social security. In the health sector, the first operation focused on establishing standards and regulations and the development and application of management tools to improve the efficiency of health spending.