As one of the critical factors influencing lifespan and thus human development, healthcare is one of the chief mandates of a government. It encompasses a large range of non-utilizing behaviors stemming from motivations that are unique to a person, a society and a country. Understanding healthcare foregoing is important to resolve unintended policy exclusions, bringing overall healthcare costs down, reduce taxpayer burdens and increase longevity and wellbeing in the society. There is therefore a need to define and understand healthcare foregoing in a globally applicable way – which can be systematically applied to different countries or cultures – despite the unique differences. Through appreciation of past concepts and models, a clear definition of healthcare foregoing is arrived at. Further to this, a globally applicable model is introduced, illustrated and explained with the help of an extensive literature review of available academic papers related to healthcare foregoing. Through results and conclusions performed on empirical data of these academic papers – the healthcare foregoing model is thus described holistically with examples. The model proves that despite economic and cultural differences between countries, healthcare foregoing as a decision is universally either an ‘individual' one or taken as a ‘community' and a person's inner alignment and conviction of conventional treatment is diagnostic of the eventual reasons behind healthcare foregoing. From the state's perspective, the healthcare foregoing can be assessed as a ‘demand' problem – where people do not perceive the need for available healthcare or a ‘supply' problem – where despite perceiving a need – people are not able to access decent equitable healthcare.