Abstract
The aim was to explore the factors associated with the financial burden (FB) of medical care, dental care, and medicines among older-aged people in Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia using EU-SILC 2017. The highest frequency of FB of medical care and medicines was in Croatia (50% and 69.1%, respectively) and of dental care in Slovenia (48.5%). The multivariate logistic regression analysis with FB as an outcome variable showed that the FB of medical care was associated with being married (OR: 1.54), reporting not severe (OR: 1.51) and severe limitations in daily activities (OR: 2.05), having higher education (OR: 2.03), and heavy burden of housing costs (OR: 0.51) in Slovenia, with very bad self-perceived health (OR: 5.23), having the slight (OR: 0.69) or heavy (OR: 0.47) burden of housing costs, making ends meet fairly easily or with some difficulty (OR: 3.58) or with difficulty or great difficulty (OR: 6.80) in Serbia, and with being married (OR: 1.43), having heavy burden of housing costs (OR: 0.62), and making ends meet fairly easily or with some difficulty (OR: 2.08) or with difficulty or great difficulty (OR: 2.52) in Croatia. The older-aged have the FB of healthcare, especially the poorest or those with health problems.
Highlights
Published: 11 March 2022Healthcare-related financial burden is defined as the ratio of aggregate family expenditures on healthcare relative to family income [1]
It is evident that compulsory health insurance provides financial protection against high healthcare costs, but it seems that further tailoring is needed
This study shows that the financial burden of healthcare is present among the older-aged population in Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia and that socio-economic and health characteristics are associated with the likelihood of financial burden
Summary
Published: 11 March 2022Healthcare-related financial burden is defined as the ratio of aggregate family expenditures on healthcare relative to family income [1]. Previous studies found that several factors were associated with the financial burden of healthcare, such as household size, presence of family members aged over 65, household members with a chronic disease, income, absence of health insurance, and education level [1,5,6]. The financial burden of healthcare is widely spread among older people in European countries, and the cross-country differences in the distribution of financial burden highlighted the importance of identifying people who are vulnerable [4,7,8]. This was mainly due to medicines, medical products, outpatient and inpatient care, and diagnostic tests [2,4]. Serbia, and Croatia inherited a compulsory health insurance system
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