background: protecting households against financial risks is one of objectives of any health system. in this regard, iran's fourth five year developmental plan act in its 90th article, articulated decreasing household's exposure to catastrophic health expenditure to one percent. hence, this study aimed to measure percentage of iranian households exposed to catastrophic health expenditures and t...

OBJECTIVE To analyze the variation in the proportion of households living below the poverty line in Brazil and the factors associated with their impoverishment. METHODS Income and expenditure data from the Household Budget Survey, which was conducted in Brazil between 2002-2003 (n = 48,470 households) and 2008-2009 (n = 55,970 households) with a national sample, were analyzed. Two cutoff poin...

BACKGROUND Dental care is extremely costly and beyond most people means in developing countries. The primary aim of this study was to determine the impact of out-of-pocket payments for dental care on household finances in 40 low and middle income countries. A second aim was to compare the burden of payments for dental care with that for other health services. METHODS We used data from 174,257...

In recent years, many lower to middle income countries have looked to insurance as a means to protect their populations from medical impoverishment. In 2003, the Chinese government initiated the New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS), a government-run voluntary insurance program for its rural population. The prevailing model of NCMS combines medical savings accounts with high-deductible catastro...

BACKGROUND While there is accumulated evidence showing the rapid rise of the burden caused by non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Vietnam, information on the extent to which households in the country suffer financial catastrophe or impoverishment caused by the diseases is still largely lacking. This paper aims to examine the self-reported prevalence of major chronic diseases among a population ...

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...