Catastrophic health care expenditure in Myanmar: policy implications in leading progress towards universal health coverage

Abstract

Background Around the world, millions of people are impoverished due to health care spending. The highest catastrophic health expenditures are found in countries in transition. Our study analyzes the extent of financial protection by estimating the incidence of catastrophic health care expenditure in Myanmar and its association with sociodemographic factors. Methods We performed a secondary analysis of data from the household surveys conducted by the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT) in 2013 and 2015 in Myanmar. To estimate the magnitude of catastrophic health care expenditure, we applied the definition of catastrophic payment proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO); a household’s out-of-pocket payment for health care is considered catastrophic if it exceeds 40% of the household capacity to pay. We also examined the changes in catastrophic payments at three different threshold levels (20, 30, 40%) with one equation allowing for a negative capacity to pay (modified WHO approach) and another equation with adjusted negative capacity to pay (standard WHO approach). Results In 2013, the incidence of catastrophic expenditure was 21, 13, 7% (standard WHO approach) and 48, 43, 41% (modified WHO approach) at the 20, 30, 40% threshold level respectively, while in 2015, these estimates were 18, 8, 6% (standard WHO approach) and 47, 41, 39% (modified WHO approach) respectively. Geographical location, gender of the household head, total number of household members, number of children under 5, and number of disabled persons in the household were statistically significantly associated with catastrophic health care expenditures in both studied years 2013 and 2015. Education of household head was statistically significantly associated with catastrophic health expenditure in 2013. We found that the incidence of catastrophic expenditures varied by the approach used to estimate expenditures. Conclusions Although the level of catastrophic health care expenditure varies depending on the approach and threshold used, the problem of catastrophic expenditures in Myanmar cannot be denied. The government of Myanmar needs to scale up the current Social Security Scheme (SSS) or establish a new financial protection mechanism for the population. Vulnerable groups, such as households with a household head with a low-level of education, households with children under the age of 5 years or disabled persons, and low-income households should be prioritized by policymakers to improve access to essential health care. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12939-019-1018-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Examining the incidence of catastrophic health expenditures and its determinants using multilevel logistic regression in Malawi

“…The low levels of overall incidence of catastrophic health expenditures may not necessarily mean high levels of financial protection considering the fact that the Malawian health care financing system is not as well developed as other sub-Saharan African countries such as Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ghana [ 32 ] with higher incidence of catastrophic health expenditures. The low levels of CHEs may reflect poor households in ability to afford care due to high costs; this forces such households to forgo treatment to avoid the consequences of out-of-pocket health payments and are not counted as incurring CHEs [ 4 , 33 , 34 ]. Estimates from the data used in this study show that 4.98% of those who reported illnesses did not seek care due to financial reasons.…”

Assessing Factors Associated with Catastrophic Healthcare Expenditure in Côte d’Ivoire: Evidence from the Household Living Standard Survey 2015

“…This effect was not observed in the absence of people over 65 years of age. The large size of households was a protective factor for CHE unlike what is usually observed [21,29]. This suggests the complexity of care consumption choices in households.…”

Factors Associated with Rural Residents’ Contract Behavior with Village Doctors in Three Counties: A Cross-Sectional Study from China

“…At that time, numerous rural residents fell into poverty due to illness, and some fell into severe poverty because of catastrophic illness. A recent study pointed out that millions of people are impoverished because of health expenditure or catastrophic amounts of money spent on healthcare [33]. Thus, medical insurance plays a pivotal role in protecting residents from poverty.…”