Analyzing Disease Financial Risk on Families with Different Incomes

doi:10.7664/CHE20131014

Abstract：Objective:To analyze the disease financial risk, affordability and impact factors among rural families of different income, by comparing with disease probability and direct economic burden of them. Methods: By applying stratified random sampling method and conducting the household investigation, the disease probability, direct economic burden and disease financial risk of each income group were estimated. Results: The low-income group has the higher disease probability with inadequate service utilization and weak affordability, which result in heavy disease economic burden and high financial risk. Conclusion:High disease financial risk of the low-income group leads to high possibility of persistence poverty due to illness. Moreover, the low-income group ’s protection from medical security system is weaker than other groups. Therefore, with further improving the security level of basic medical insurance, targeted supporting policy should be carried on the low-income group, such as increasing the level of medical assistance, or strengthening the synergistic effect of medical assistance and basic medical insurance.