BACKGROUND This study aimed to examine the availability, use, and affordability of medicines in urban China following the 2009 Health Care System Reform that included implementation of universal health coverage (UHC). METHODS This longitudinal study was performed in Hangzhou (high income, eastern China) and Baoji (lower income, western China). Five yearly household surveys were conducted (one...

Medical expenses are an increasingly important contributor to household financial risk. We examine the effect of medical expenditure risk on the willingness of Medicare beneficiaries to hold risky assets. Using a discrete factor maximum likelihood method to address the endogeneity of insurance choices, we find that having a moderately protective Medigap or employer supplemental policy increases...

Jessie X. Fan, Barbara B. Brown, Lori Kowaleski-Jones, Ken R. Smith, and Cathleen D. Zick The 2001 report titled “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity” identified overweight and obesity as major public health problems, costing U.S. society as much as $117 billion a year and posing as great a threat of death as poverty, smoking, or problem drinking....

This study evaluates the household food demand patterns among different income sorts in urban and rural areas of Pakistan and estimation of food expenditure and household size elasticities. The different income sorts are the Lower Income Group(≤ 8000), Lower-middle Income Group(800112000), Middle Income Group(12001-18000),Upper-middle Income Group (18001-35000) and Upper Income Group (35000+) P...

OBJECTIVE The paper examines whether out-of-pocket health care expenditure also has regional discrepancies, comparing to the equity between urban and rural areas, and across households. METHOD Sampled data were derived from Urban Household Survey and Rural Household Survey data for 2011/2012 for Anhui Province, and 11049 households were included in this study. The study compared differences i...

BACKGROUND Illness and the medical expenditure that follows have a profound impact on the well-being of individuals and households. China is a huge country with significant regional differences. The goal of this study is to investigate the associations of illness and medical expenditure with other categories of household expenditures, with special attention paid to the differences in observatio...

BACKGROUND The Brazilian public health system, free and universal, should limit out-of-pocket health expenses. However, Brazil was reported as one of the countries with the highest proportion of families experiencing catastrophic expenditure. This study was designed to assess occurrence of high health spending in a low-income population, as well as the pattern of out-of-pocket health payments. ...