The study evaluated free access to hypertension and diabetes medicines and the reasons reported for lack of access. The sample included 4,003 elderly people living in Primary Care Unit coverage areas from 41 Southern and Northeastern Brazilian cities. Free access was higher in the Northeast (62.4%). The strategy of the Family Health Program (Programa Saúde da Família - PSF) was more effective i...

Microfinance is the provision of financial services for the poor. Health program through microfinance has the potential to address several access barriers to health. We report the design and baseline findings of a multi-site non-randomized evaluation of the effect of a health program on the members of two microfinance organizations from Karnataka and Gujarat states of India. Villages identified...

OBJECTIVE To identify problems faced by older adults with diabetes due to out-of-pocket medication costs. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In this cross-sectional national survey of 875 adults with diabetes treated with hypoglycemic medication, respondents reported whether they had underused prescription medications due to cost pressures or had experienced other financial problems associated with ...

PURPOSE Cancer patients carry rising burdens of health care-related out-of-pocket expenses, and a growing number of patients are considered "underinsured." Our objective was to describe experiences of insured cancer patients requesting copayment assistance and to describe the impact of health care expenses on well-being and treatment. METHODS We conducted baseline and follow-up surveys regard...

BACKGROUND Generation of resources for providing health care services is an important issue in developing countries. User charges in the form of Surgical Package Program (SPP) were introduced in all district hospitals of Haryana to address this problem. We evaluate the effect of this SPP program on surgical care utilization and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures. METHODS Data on 25437 surgeries...

In the article in this issue by Choudhry et al,1 the authors assess whether eliminating out-of-pocket costs would be an effective way to improve medication compliance in Medicare patients after they have experienced an acute myocardial infarction (MI). The specific questions the authors raise are whether full coverage would be cost-effective using the traditional values for such measurements an...

This paper revisits the debate on altruism vs exchange motive for bequest and studies to what extent the saving behavior of elderly Europeans is di↵erent in the presence or absence of adult children. To this purpose, we develop a structural model with two overlapping generations, namely elderly parents and their adult children. For each generation, we formulate a separate lifecycle model in whi...

CAFE (“Conditional Access for Europe”) is an ongoing project in the European Community's ESPRIT program. The goal of CAFE is to develop innovative systems for conditional access, and in particular, digital payment systems. An important aspect of CAFE is high security of all parties concerned, with the least possible requirements that they are forced to trust other parties (so-called multi-party...