BACKGROUND The main aim of this study was to evaluate the achievements of some important goals of Iran's urban family physician plan. This plan was implemented when the country experienced economic instability. We examine whether an economic crisis affects the efficacy of a healthcare program. METHODS We used the household income and expenditures survey data for 2011 (before program implement...

BACKGROUND Out-of-pocket payments can have a large impact on the demand for healthcare. They can be essential not only to decrease unnecessary service use, but also to encourage the use of particular preventive services provided free of charge or at a lower price. Moreover, out-of-pocket payments may increase the costs of unhealthy behaviour and provide incentives for a healthier lifestyle. M...

To achieve universal health coverage (UHC), a range of health-financing reforms, including removal of user fees and the expansion of social health insurance, have been implemented in many countries. While the focus of much research and discussion on UHC has been on the impact of health-financing reforms on population coverage, health-service utilization and out-of-pocket payments, the implicati...

This article analyses the redistributive effect caused by health financing and the distribution of healthcare utilization in Argentina before and during the severe 2001/2002 economic crisis. Both dramatically changed during this period: the redistributive effect became much more positive and utilization shifted from pro-poor to pro-rich. This clearly demonstrates that when utilization is contin...

BACKGROUND National health accounts provide useful information to understand the functioning of a health financing system. This article attempts to present a profile of the health system financing in Malawi using data from NHA. It specifically attempts to document the health financing situation in the country and proposes recommendations relevant for developing a comprehensive health financing ...

The paper attempts to describe catastrophic health spending and its impact to poverty in the Philippine setting. It focuses on the role of out-of-pocket payments for health care as a springboard in the analysis of measuring the magnitude and analyzing the extent of damage of catastrophic health expenditures. It also explores the scope and trends of these spending by different socioeconomic indi...

OBJECTIVE To measure the impact of China's New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) on catastrophic medical payments of rural households in Linyi County, Shandong Province. METHOD In 2005, from a stratified cluster sample of 3101 rural households, we identified 375 households that might be at risk of catastrophic payments by searching through NCMS claims and interviewing key informants. We inter...

Ms. H has Medicare due to a disability and was in a Medicare private health plan. She chose this particular plan because it had a cap on out-of-pocket payments. She discovered, however, that the cap did not always apply to her cancer treatments, and her out-ofpocket costs were higher than she had expected. Fortunately, Ms. H’s husband was starting a new job, and she was able to disenroll and ge...

Objective To investigate trends in out-of-pocket health-care payments and catastrophic health expenditure in India by household age composition. Methods We obtained data from four national consumer expenditure surveys and three health-care utilization surveys conducted between 1993 and 2014. Households were divided into five groups by age composition. We defined catastrophic health expenditur...

Unfortunately, informal payments for health care are responsible for a considerable share of patients' out-of-pocket payments in Iran (1, 2). Almost all health care users and providers are familiar with such payments with the name of “under the table payments” in Iran (3). About half of Iranian health care seekers have faced with such payments at least one time during a year (2). Although the i...