International Institute for Population Sciences
Deemed to be University (An Autonomous Organization of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India)

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Trends in out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) and catastrophic health spending (CHS) in India

Reduction in out-of-pocket (OOP) payment is a measure of financial protection and one of the key monitoring indicators of SDGs. Reliable estimates of medical health spending and out-of-pocket payment on health care are increasingly sought by national and state governments, developmental partners, and international organizations. While estimates of OOP and medical expenditure are available from varying sources, they suffer from data and methodological limitations and temporal comparison.

In India, despite increase in public spending and increasing coverage of health insurance, the pattern of health spending remained unchanged over time. About 71% of health spending in 2004 and 69.1% in 2014 were met by out-of-pocket. Estimates of OOP payment, largely derived from NSS health surveys are not directly comparable due to variations in prices over time. Similarly, the data and methodological limitations led to varying estimates of catastrophic health spending in the country. In this context, the main objective of this project is to examine the onset of diseases, provide reliable and comparable estimates of medical and out-of-pocket payment and catastrophic health expenditure over time. It also assesses the data and methodological limitations in estimating the catastrophic health expenditure in India

Financial Sponsors:

• International Institute for Population Sciences

Principal Investigator :

Project Staffs :