Financial crisis and income-related inequalities in the universal provision of a public service: the case of healthcare in Spain

International Journal for Equity in Health

Research

Guillem López-Casasnovas¹  Ignacio Abásolo²  Marc Saez³ 

[1] Center for Research in Health and Economics (CRES), University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain;Department of Economics and Business, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain;Barcelona Graduate School (BSGE), University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain;Department of Applied Economics and Quantitative Methods, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain;University Institute of Regional Development, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain;Research Group on Statistics, Econometrics and Health (GRECS) University of Girona, Carrer de la Universitat de Girona 10 Campus de Montilivi, 17003, Girona, Spain;CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), Madrid, Spain;Center for Research in Health and Economics (CRES), University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain;

关键词: Financial crisis;    Universality;    Health services;    Inequality;    Access to the health system;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12939-017-0630-y

 received in 2017-03-28, accepted in 2017-07-14,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe objective of this paper is to analyse whether the recent recession has altered health care utilisation patterns of different income groups in Spain.MethodsBased on information concerning individuals ‘income and health care use, along with health need indicators and demographic characteristics (provided by the Spanish National Health Surveys from 2006/07 and 2011/12), econometric models are estimated in two parts (mixed logistic regressions and truncated negative binominal regressions) for each of the public health services studied (family doctor appointments, appointments with specialists, hospitalisations, emergencies and prescription drug use).ResultsThe results show that the principle of universal access to public health provision does not in fact prevent a financial crisis from affecting certain income groups more than others in their utilisation of public health services.ConclusionsSpecifically, in relative terms the recession has been more detrimental to low-income groups in the cases of specialist appointments and hospitalisations, whereas it has worked to their advantage in the cases of emergency services and family doctor appointments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017

【 图 表 】

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