Acta Univ. Agric. Silvic. Mendelianae Brun. 2016, 64(6), 1961-1970 | DOI: 10.11118/actaun201664061961

Access to Health Care and the Out-of-Pocket Burden of the European Elderly

Veronika Krùtilová
Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University in Brno, Zemìdìlská 1, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic

Provision of access to health care is a desirable feature of health care systems. Access to health care is caused to be restricted whether out-of-pocket burden is too high. The paper focuses on the European elderly with restricted access to health care and evaluates their health care burden and determines factors affecting the burden. The data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe from the fifth wave is used. The methods of descriptive and multivariate analysis are applied. A linear regression model with a bootstrapped method is used. The results showed that inequalities in access to health care exist. Unmet need is a critical issue in Estonia and Italy. The highest burden is found in Estonia, Italy and Belgium. Chronic diseases and limitation in activities significantly contributes to health care burden. Expenditure on drugs, outpatient and nursing care have a significant effect on the burden. The effect is found to be insignificant for inpatient care. Income and the employment status is a preventing factor.

Keywords: elderly, unmet need, health care, out-of-pocket payments, access to health care, health care burden, SHARE
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This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 5 (DOIs:10.6103/SHARE.w5.100), see Börsch-Supan et al. (2013) for methodological details. The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and FP7 (SHARE-PREP: N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: N°227822, SHARE M4: N°261982). Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01_AG09740-13S2, P01_AG005842, P01_AG08291, P30_AG12815, R21_AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG_BSR06-11, OGHA_04-064) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org).

Prepublished online: December 21, 2016; Published: January 1, 2017  Show citation

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Krùtilová, V. (2016). Access to Health Care and the Out-of-Pocket Burden of the European Elderly. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 64(6), 1961-1970. doi: 10.11118/actaun201664061961
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