BACKGROUND We estimated the personal costs to women found to have a breast problem (either breast cancer or benign breast disease) in terms of time spent, miles traveled, and cash payments made for detection, diagnosis, initial treatment, and follow-up. METHODS We analyzed data from personal interviews with 465 women from four communities in Florida. These women were randomly selected from th...

BACKGROUND Cancer is a major cause of mortality and a major contributor to health care costs in the United States. An increasing number of cancer patients are treated with oral cancer therapy. Older patients are more likely to have cancer and to be at risk for adherence problems with oral cancer drugs. As a result of substantial cost sharing required for oral cancer drugs and the possibility of...

UNLABELLED National surveys suggest that millions of adults in the United States use complementary health approaches such as acupuncture, chiropractic manipulation, and herbal medicines to manage painful conditions such as arthritis, back pain, and fibromyalgia. Yet, national and per person out-of-pocket (OOP) costs attributable to this condition-specific use are unknown. In the 2007 National H...

This article presents data about expenses and sources of payment for nursing homes for 1987 and 1996. A central finding is that the role of Medicare in financing nursing home care has greatly expanded. Medicare payments represent 2 and 19 percent of the total for 1987 and 1996, respectively. As Medicare's role increased, there was an accompanying decline in the proportion of expenses paid out o...

Despite the importance of patient insurance in the market for prescription pharmaceuticals, little is known about the impact of patient reimbursement on the pricing behavior of pharmaceutical firms. I examine the link between potential patient out-of-pocket expenses and pharmaceutical pricing using a unique policy experiment from Germany. Starting in 1989, a maximum reimbursement for a given me...

BACKGROUND "Chiranjeevi Yojana (CY)", a state-led large-scale demand-side financing scheme (DSF) under public-private partnership to increase institutional delivery, has been implemented across Gujarat state, India since 2005. The scheme aims to provide free institutional childbirth services in accredited private health facilities to women from socially disadvantaged groups (eligible women). Th...

BACKGROUND In the evaluation of a healthcare system, it is of interest to identify factors associated with the usage of different healthcare facilities and with different levels of medical expenditure. METHODS A survey was conducted in January and February of 2012 in China. It focused on the middle-aged and elderly with age of 45 and above. A total of 2,093 people from 1,152 households were s...

OBJECTIVE We examined the association between state Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) income eligibility and the financial burden reported by low-income families raising children with special health care needs (CSHCN). SAMPLE AND METHODS Data on low-income CSHCN and their families were from the National Survey of Children With Special Health Care Needs (N = 17039)...

Abstract Background Stroke is a devastating disease and major cause of death disability in China. While existing studies focused mainly on differences stroke patients’ health care utilization by insurance type, this study assesses whether medical costs differed type across four cities Methods A 5% random sample from the 2014–2016 China Urban Employees’ Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) Residents’...