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Catastrophic expenditure on medicines: an analysis based on the portuguese household budget survey 2015/2016
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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Financial protection is a core dimension of health system evaluation; therefore, several
works on catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) have been developed. There are, however,
some gaps in the literature; hence, this work aims to look at CHE from a different angle,
analysing the money spent by households. The objectives are to identify how many and
which health services are driving CHE and analyse the profile of households with CHE. The
data of this work come from the Portuguese Household Budget Survey 2015/2016 and the
study includes 11,398 observations. The WHO methodology for CHE identification was
adopted. Over one fifth of the households incurring CHE spent money only on medicines,
and this presented, by far, the highest expenditures. All families with CHE spent money on
medicines, and about two thirds spent on up to three items. Expenditures on medical
devices and hospital services were low. Dental care expenditures tended to assume extreme
values. Although primary care services are spread across the country, expenditures on GP
services were not at all negligible. The typical household with CHE consists of an old poor
person living alone. Exempting these people from medicine co-payments is crucial to
prevent catastrophic expenditure.
Description
Keywords
Catastrophic health expenditure Financial protection Portugal
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Quintal, Carlota; Lopes, José (2021). Catastrophic expenditure on medicines: an analysis based on the portuguese household budget survey 2015/2016. Journal of EU Research in Business. ISSN 2165-9990. 2021, p.1-7
Publisher
IBIMA