Health is a fundamental human right and an essential pillar of inclusive and sustainable social development. Target 3.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to achieve universal health coverage, ensuring access to essential health services, including financial risk protection. However, health systems in Latin America and the Caribbean face multiple structural challenges, backdropped by a development crisis involving three development traps that hinder its progress. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) stresses the need to transform the region’s development models and strengthen health systems through a sustained and efficient increase in public funding. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that countries should invest at least 6% of GDP in public health, in order to achieve a significant impact on financial protection and reduce out-of-pocket spending to below 20% of total health expenditure, the exercise undertaken in this document suggests that investment of 6.7% of GDP is needed. Ensuring the financial sustainability of health systems is key to successful implementation of the investments needed to reduce inequalities, move towards universal health coverage (UHC) and guarantee the right to health for all, leaving no one behind.