BACKGROUND Significant health expenses can force households to reduce consumption of items required for daily living and long-term well-being, depriving them of the capability to lead economically stable and healthy lives. Previous studies of out-of-pocket (OOP) and other health expenses have typically characterized them as "catastrophic" in terms of a threshold level or percentage of household...

This master thesis examines the impact of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) on rural residents' out-of-pocket medical expenses (OOP) in China. The thesis first uses quantitative methods to identify the statistical relationships between NCMS and rural OOP and finds that enrolling in NCMS is associated with higher OOP. Then, using the 2009 reform, also known as Healthy China 2020, as a st...

Protecting households from high out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for health care is an important health system goal. High OOP payments can push households into poverty and make them vulnerable to catastrophic health expenditures. This study, based in India, aims to: (a) estimate OOP payments for health and related impoverishment across economic groups; (b) decompose OOP payments and relate the cont...

BACKGROUND Cancer accounts for one-fifth of the total deaths in China and brings heavy financial burden to patients and their families. Chinese government has made strong commitment to develop three types of social medical insurance since 1997 and recently, more attempts were invested to provide better financial protection. To analyze health services utilization and financial burden of insured ...

BACKGROUND Road traffic injuries (RTI) are an increasing public health problem in India where out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures on health are among the highest in the world. We estimated the OOP expenses for RTI in a large city in India. METHODS Information on medical and non-medical expenditure was documented for RTI cases of all ages that reported alive or dead to the emergency departments o...

Background Measures taken over the past four years in Greece to reduce pharmaceutical expenditure have led to significant price reductions for medicines, but have also changed patient cost-sharing rates for prescription drugs. This study attempts to capture the resulting increase in patients’ out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses for prescription drugs during the 2011-2014 period.   Methods The authors ...

BACKGROUND Generic-only pharmacy benefits may present more of a burden to patients with chronic disease conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), where generic drug therapy choices are more limited. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the strategies that elderly patients with COPD use to manage their out-of-pocket (OOP) prescription expenses in a generic-only pharmacy benefit compare...