Catastrophic health expenditure in households with chronic disease patients: A pre-post comparison of the New Health Care Reform in Shaanxi Province, China

作者：Yongjian Xu, Jie Ma, Na Wu, Xiaojing Fan, Tao Zhang, Zhongliang Zhou, Jianmin Gao, Jianping Ren, Gang Chen · 发表于：PLoS ONE · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0194539 · 被引用次数：51 · 研究领域：Healthcare Systems and Reforms、Global Health Care Issues、Global Maternal and Child Health

INTRODUCTION: In 2009, China officially launched the New Health Care Reform (NHCR). One important purpose of the reform was to reduce financial burden of health care through health insurance expansion and health care provider regulations. This study aimed to provide evidence on the effect of the NHCR reform on catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) by comparing the occurrence and inequality of CHE among households with chronic diseases patients before and after the reform. METHODS: This study used the subset of data from the 2008 and 2013 National Health Services Survey conducted in Shaanxi Province. Our sample included households with chronic diseases patients and excluded observations with key variables missing. The final sample size was 1942 households in 2008 and 7704 households in 2013. We defined CHE occurrence following the definition of the World Health Organization (WHO). The income-related inequality in CHE was measured by the concentration index. A multi-level logistic regression model was used in the study to explore the influence of the NHCR on CHE occurrence, controlling for important covariates. RESULTS: From 2008 to 2013, the occurrence rate of CHE in rural areas declined from 29.15% to 23.62%. However, the CHE rate in urban areas increased from 19.18% to 24.95%. The interaction term between year and rural/urban location was statistically significant, confirming that the influence of the NHCR on the CHE occurrence rates were heterogeneous between rural and urba...