relationship between health insurance and catastrophic medical payment in hospitals affiliated to iran university of medical science; 2009

the protection of households against catastrophic medical payment always has been one of the most important objectives in any health care system. this study assessed the performance of iranian health insurance schemes in protection the patients against catastrophic medical payment. this is an analytical study which performed in a cross sectional design on 400 patients that hospitalized in selected hospitals affiliated to iran university of medical science. among 16 variables only 8 variables include: household’s head gender, number of hospitalization, residency in tehran, income level, other family member’s illness, ownership of house, number of household’s members and finally the coverage of complementary health insurance have had significant relation with the probability of catastrophic medical payment occurrence. it seems that policy makers should pay more attention to socio-economic factors, demographic factors and the epidemiology of diseases in our country to design suitable prepayment schemes. jel classification: c25, l10