BACKGROUND Over the last decade there has been an increase in healthcare expenditures while at the same time the inequity in distribution of resources has grown. These two issues have urged the researchers to review the determinants of healthcare expenditures. In this study, we surveyed the determinants of health expenditures in Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) countries. METHODS We us...

BACKGROUND Since 1996, Washington State law has required that private health insurance cover licensed complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers. OBJECTIVE To evaluate how insured people used CAM providers and what role this played in healthcare utilization and expenditures. STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis of insurance enrollees from western Washington in 2002. METHODS A...

Policymakers are often interested in understanding how the receipt of a subsidy affects economic behavior. In the case of housing assistance, they may want to understand how cost savings (if they exist) from the receipt of a rental subsidy affects their spending on other goods. This paper analyzes Consumer Expenditure (CE) Survey data to investigate the relationship between rental assistance an...

The global increase in the prevalence of diabetes is due to population growth, aging, urbanisation and an increase of obesity and physical inactivity. The primary determinants of the epidemic are the rapid epidemiological transition associated with changes in dietary patterns and decreased physical activity. Unlike in the West, where older populations are most affected, the burden of diabetes i...

One of the main challenges in the implementation of health care reform in developing countries of India has been the development of catastrophic household expenditure on health care. This papers aims at contributing to the examination of the content, measurement and policy implications of health care reform tackling catastrophic risks in one of the oldest city of Odisha that is Cuttack. We unde...

OBJECTIVES To quantify the life years gained and financial savings by preventing a case of occupational cancer. METHODS The authors retrieved data from the Taiwan Cancer Registry and linked them with the National Mortality Registry to estimate the survival functions for major occupational cancers: lung, pleural mesothelioma, urinary bladder and leukaemia. Assuming a constant excess hazard for...

BACKGROUND Frequently attending patients to primary care (FA) are likely to cost more in primary care than their non-frequently attending counterparts. But how much is spent on specialist care of FAs? We describe the healthcare expenditures of frequently attending patients during 1, 2 or 3 years and test the hypothesis that additional costs can be explained by FAs' combined morbidity and primar...

BACKGROUND China's health system reform launched in early 2000s has achieved better coverage of health insurance and significantly increased the use of healthcare for vast majority of Chinese population. This study was to examine changes in the structure of total health expenditures in China in 2000-2011, and to investigate the financial burden of healthcare placed on its population, particular...