Cardiovascular diseases are a major public health challenge in India with the emergence of disease burden of non-communicable diseases equivalent to that of communicable diseases. Long-term diseases entail large out-of-pocket expenditure too. There is also a dearth of studies regarding recent estimates of expenditures on treatment of people suffering from chronic conditions. The present paper f...

Because of its policy implications, the income elasticity of health care expenditures is a subject of much debate. Governments may have an interest in subsidizing the care of those with low income. Using more than two decades of data from the Iran Household Expenditure and Income Survey, this article investigates the relationship between income and health care expenditure in urban and rural are...

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). It is conducted to provide nationally representative estimates of health care use, expenditures, sources of payment, and insurance coverage for the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population. It comprises three component surveys: the Household Component (HC), the Medical Provide...

BACKGROUND Smoking remains very common in Chinese men, and the economic burden caused by cigarette consumption on smokers and their families may be substantial. Using a large nationally representative household survey, the third National Health Services Survey (NHSS, 2003), we estimated the economic impact of smoking on households. METHODS Smoking status of all household members (over 15 year...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the total domestic health expenditure in Hong Kong between fiscal years 1989/90 and 2001/02, with breakdown by financing source, provider, and function over time. METHODS The standard health accounting methods as per the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development System of Health Accounts guidelines of 2000 were adopted. RESULTS Total domestic health expend...

INTRODUCTION This study investigates the efficiency gains of integrated care models in Switzerland, since these models are regarded as cost containment options in national social health insurance. These plans generate much lower average health care expenditure than the basic insurance plan. The question is, however, to what extent these total savings are due to the effects of selection and effi...

The National Medical Care Expenditure Survey (NMCES) was characterized by a longitudinal survey design, with data collection targeted to five points in time covering the survey year. Field conditions did not allow for all interviews to be conducted over the targeted time periods. A subset of sampled households (holdovers) were not contacted for a particular wave of the survey and data were gath...

BACKGROUND Physical therapy decreases low back pain, improves function, and may lead to decreased use of medical services. However, factors predicting physical therapy utilization for patients with low back pain are not well understood. OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to identify the impact of out-of-pocket expenditure on physical therapy utilization for US adults with nonspecific lo...

Objectives: To examine the economic burden of diabetes mellitus (DM) on medical expenditure among patients with respiratory failure (RF) requiring mechanical ventilation during hospitalization. Methods: We extracted the data from Taiwan National Health Research Insurance Database for those adult patients on their first hospitalization for RF requiring mechanical ventilation between 2004 and 201...

Background and purpose: Utilization of health care services and food influence the health status. The food and health care expenditure ratios determine the importance level of them in household's consumption expenditures. We aimed to investigate the Iranian rural and urban food and health expenditure ratios inequality during 1998 to 2012. Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive longitudina...