Publication: Measuring Financial Protection in Health
Date
2008-03
ISSN
Published
2008-03
Author(s)
Abstract
Health systems are not just about
improving health: good ones also ensure that people are
protected from the financial consequences of receiving
medical care. Anecdotal evidence suggests health systems
often perform badly in this respect, apparently with
devastating consequences for households, especially poor
ones and near-poor ones. Two principal methods have been
used to measure financial protection in health. Both relate
a household's out-of-pocket spending to a threshold
defined in terms of living standards in the absence of the
spending: the first defines spending as catastrophic if it
exceeds a certain percentage of the living standards
measure; the second defines spending as impoverishing if it
makes the difference between a household being above and
below the poverty line. The paper provides an overview of
the methods and issues arising in each case, and presents
empirical work in the area of financial protection in
health, including the impacts of government policy. The
paper also reviews a recent critique of the methods used to
measure financial protection.
Citation
“Wagstaff, Adam. 2008. Measuring Financial Protection in Health. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 4554. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/50714d56-f1ca-5c19-87a9-465c705f000b License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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