according to importance of cirrhosis of the liver and the lack of information about the economic burden of the disease, we performed this study to estimate the economic burden of liver cirrhosis in iran in 2011.the cost-of-illness method, based on the human capital theory, has been used. both direct and indirect costs have been estimated using a prevalence approach and bottom-up method. the inp...

Since 1942, Canada’s Income Tax Act has provided tax relief to taxpayers who spend substantial amounts of their income on out-of-pocket medical expenses. Since 1988, this relief comes in the form of a tax credit, an amount that is directly deductible against income tax payable. Not all medical expenses are eligible. In particular, the statutory scheme excludes some, but not all, medical service...

Janet is a 67-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer. Despite having insurance, Janet has been saddled with life-altering out-of-pocket expenses from her cancer treatment. In Part I of this two-part series, we described how Janet’s struggle with out-of-pocket expenses was not unique; a growing body of evidence has detailed the negative impact of costs on insured patients receiving cancer ...

BACKGROUND We estimated the personal costs to women found to have a breast problem (either breast cancer or benign breast disease) in terms of time spent, miles traveled, and cash payments made for detection, diagnosis, initial treatment, and follow-up. METHODS We analyzed data from personal interviews with 465 women from four communities in Florida. These women were randomly selected from th...

This article presents data about expenses and sources of payment for nursing homes for 1987 and 1996. A central finding is that the role of Medicare in financing nursing home care has greatly expanded. Medicare payments represent 2 and 19 percent of the total for 1987 and 1996, respectively. As Medicare's role increased, there was an accompanying decline in the proportion of expenses paid out o...

Despite the importance of patient insurance in the market for prescription pharmaceuticals, little is known about the impact of patient reimbursement on the pricing behavior of pharmaceutical firms. I examine the link between potential patient out-of-pocket expenses and pharmaceutical pricing using a unique policy experiment from Germany. Starting in 1989, a maximum reimbursement for a given me...

OBJECTIVE We examined the association between state Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) income eligibility and the financial burden reported by low-income families raising children with special health care needs (CSHCN). SAMPLE AND METHODS Data on low-income CSHCN and their families were from the National Survey of Children With Special Health Care Needs (N = 17039)...

This report focuses on two questions of current interest to policymakers. First, "What percent of U.S. families experience financially burdensome health expenses?" and, second, "What are the determinants of financially burdensome health expenses among U.S. families?" The first question is addressed by examining how the distribution in the United States of families with financially burdensome he...