Costa Rica's path toward achieving universal health coverage is explained as well as the major actors in the health care system and main policy frameworks upon which the system is built. Early prioritisations on primary care permitted population health indicators to improve and today Costa Rica has the second highest life expectancy among countries within the western hemisphere. Access to health in Costa Rica has continuously improved over the past decades, achieving significant progress towards universal health coverage; data from 2014 indicate that health care coverage in Costa Rica reached 94.7% of the population.