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“Universal Health Coverage” (UHC) is considered as the workhorse to attain the 2015-2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, as soon as implementation is concerned, several challenges arise. Among these is the question of the redistributive effects of UHC among and across generations. Indeed, given the expected fiscal deficit resulting from the expansion of coverage, the welfare impact of the UHC may not be neutral across generations. Unless a policy adjustment is undertaken, future generations may well foot the bill of the UHC. This raises the important policy questions of who bears the burden of the UHC and whether the UHC-fiscal stance is sustainable in the long-term. These two questions are addressed using an overlapping generations model within a general equilibrium framework (OLG-CGE) applied to Palestine. We assessed and compare alternative ways of financing the deficit-ridden UHC (viz. deferred-debt-finance, current finance, phased-manner) and their implications on intergenerational inequalities. Results show that in the absence of any policy adjustment, the implementation of UHC would explode the deficit-GDP and debt-GDP ratios. This indicates that the UHC-fiscal stance is rather unsustainable in the long-term, thus, calling for a policy adjustment to service the UHC-debt. Among the policies we examined, a current rather, than deferred, debt-finance through consumption taxation emerged to be preferred over other policies in terms of its implications for both fiscal sustainability and intergenerational inequality.
