Out-of-Pocket Spending and Catastrophic Health Expenditures
2022
Universal health coverage aims to provide access to health services for all without financial hardship. Moving toward universal coverage while ensuring financial risk protection from out-of-pocket health expenditures is a critical objective of the Sustainable Development Goal for Health. In tracking country progress toward universal health coverage, analysts and policymakers usually report on two summary indicators of lack of financial risk protection: the prevalence of catastrophic health expenditures and the prevalence of impoverishing health expenditures.
This article builds on the catastrophic health expenditures indicator: it examines the distribution (density) of health out-of-pocket budget share as a way to capture both the magnitude and dispersion in the ratio of households’ out-of-pocket health expenditures relative to consumption or income at the population level. The approach is illustrated with country-specific examples using data from the World Health Organization’s World Health Surveys.
Out-of-Pocket Spending and Catastrophic Health Expenditures
Source:
Jbaily A, Haakenstad A, Kiros M, Riumallo-Herl C, Verguet S. Examining the Density in Out-of-Pocket Spending Share in the Estimation of Catastrophic Health Expenditures. The European Journal of Health Economics 2022; 23 (5): 903-912. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-021-01316-x