Health Policy and Planning Advance Access published online on September 2, 2006
Health Policy and Planning, doi:10.1093/heapol/czl026
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1 World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in Estonia, WHO Regional Office for Europe, Tallinn, Estonia
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Ninety-four per cent of the Estonian population is covered by public health insurance, but private expenditure has been increasing quickly both in real terms and as a percentage of total health expenditure. To date, little attention has been given to the impact this could have on the population's financial protection. Out-of-pocket payments, which account for the bulk of the private expenditure in many low- and middle-income countries, can push people into poverty and more generally represent too high a burden for some households. It is therefore very important that governments monitor the impact of out-of-pocket payments on health. Using an example from Estonia, this paper aims to illustrate that, if household budget survey data are available, monitoring a population's financial protection is not a complex undertaking. Further, by combining simple statistical analyses of these data with a good knowledge of a country's health system, it is possible to give a fairly detailed diagnostic of the nature of the population's coverage limitation. This allows for the presentation of easily interpretable results that can raise awareness among policy-makers and help to target adequate policy responses. Using Estonian household budget surveys from 1995, 2001 and 2002, we show that the proportion of households who spend more than 20% of their capacity to pay on health increased from 3.4% in 1995 to 7.4% in 2002 and that in 2002, 1.3% of the population fell into poverty because of health payments. Logistic regression helps in identifying the population most at risk: elderly patients who belong to poor households and spend high amounts on medicines. This study, which can be replicated, did raise awareness among policy-makers about the changes in financial protection over the years in Estonia.
Original Papers
Detecting changes in financial protection: creating evidence for policy in Estonia
Jarno Habicht 1 *, Ke Xu 2, Agnes Couffinhal 3, and Joseph Kutzin 3
2 Health Systems Financing, EIP/WHO, Geneva, Switzerland
3 Health Systems Financing Programme, WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark
Jarno Habicht, E-mail: jha{at}who.org.ee
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