Socio-economic status and household catastrophic health expenditure in urban Argentina

Abstract

Objectives: is to explore the socioeconomic determinants of catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditure in Argentina in order to be able to capture the distribution of catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) among health coverage. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on the Household Expenditure Survey for 2012/2013. Using the households capacity to pay (CTP) the proportion of households with CHE was estimated as those households that face health out-of-pocket above 40% of their CTP. A logistic regression was used to identify the determinants of CHE. To measure socioeconomic status a composite wealth index was calculated. Results: The final sample included 20,699 households. The main determinants were having a senior member [OR=2.14 (1.40-3.28)], senior head of house hold [OR=0.46 (0.29-0.74)] and employment status [OR=0.63 (0.49-0.80)]. Stratified analysis by health coverage was not statistically significant. Conclusions: There are few households that had health OOP above 40% of their capacity to pay, over 97% of the households had OOP that were below this threshold. Moreover, only 51% of the households incurred in out-of-pocket health payments. Impoverishment rate after OOP payments was 0.8%, higher for the lower quintiles.