IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/ijhcfe/v15y2015i3p329-338.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The financial burden of out of pocket prescription drug expenses in Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Sam Caldbick
  • Xiaojing Wu
  • Tom Lynch
  • Naser Al-Khatib
  • Mustafa Andkhoie
  • Marwa Farag

Abstract

Pharmaceutical expenditures account for approximately 15.9 % of total health expenditures in Canada. Unlike hospital and physician services, in which costs are universally covered, most pharmacological therapy does not fall under the umbrella of ‘medically necessary’ services set out by the Canada Health Act, and therefore is funded through a mix of public and private plans. Little is known about the actual financial burden experienced by Canadians from out-of-pocket drug expenditures (OOPDE). This paper examines the burden of OOPDE in Canada. 1.1 % of Canadian households exceed our catastrophic threshold (9 %) of the drug budget share. Additionally, 2.6 and 8.2 % of households exceed lower thresholds of 6 and 3 % respectively. We find an inverse relationship between household income and the burden of OPPDE. Low-income households have the highest likelihood of being in the ‘catastrophic’ drug expenditure category. This finding suggests that a vulnerable population of ‘working poor’ are likely to be experiencing disproportionate financial burden because they are not eligible for public assistance programs. Seniors experience the highest burden of OPPDE when compared to other age groups. We also find that there is significant interprovincial variation in the burden of OOPDE, which partly reflects different provincial government drug coverage policies. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Sam Caldbick & Xiaojing Wu & Tom Lynch & Naser Al-Khatib & Mustafa Andkhoie & Marwa Farag, 2015. "The financial burden of out of pocket prescription drug expenses in Canada," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 329-338, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:ijhcfe:v:15:y:2015:i:3:p:329-338
    DOI: 10.1007/s10754-015-9171-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10754-015-9171-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10754-015-9171-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sule Alan & Thomas Crossley & Paul Grootendorst & Michael Veall, 2005. "Distributional effects of `general population' prescription drug programs in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 38(1), pages 128-148, February.
    2. Alan, Sule & Crossley, Thomas F. & Grootendorst, Paul & Veall, Michael R., 2002. "The effects of drug subsidies on out-of-pocket prescription drug expenditures by seniors: regional evidence from Canada," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 805-826, September.
    3. Kapur, Vishnu & Basu, Kisalaya, 2005. "Drug coverage in Canada: who is at risk?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 181-193, February.
    4. Łuczak, Julita & García-Gómez, Pilar, 2012. "Financial burden of drug expenditures in Poland," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 256-264.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mat'uv{s} Maciak & Ostap Okhrin & Michal Pev{s}ta, 2019. "Infinitely Stochastic Micro Forecasting," Papers 1908.10636, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2019.
    2. Sterling Edmonds & Mohammad Hajizadeh, 2019. "Assessing progressivity and catastrophic effect of out-of-pocket payments for healthcare in Canada: 2010–2015," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(7), pages 1001-1011, September.
    3. Veronika Kočiš Krůtilová, 2021. "The out‐of‐pocket medication burden: Which health problems impact the Czech population aged 50+?," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(6), pages 2129-2144, November.
    4. Hajizadeh, Mohammad & Pandey, Sujita & Pulok, Mohammad Habibullah, 2023. "Decomposition of socioeconomic inequalities in catastrophic out-of-pocket expenditure for healthcare in Canada," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 51-59.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Chao & Li, Qing & Sweetman, Arthur & Hurley, Jeremiah, 2015. "Mandatory universal drug plan, access to health care and health: Evidence from Canada," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 80-96.
    2. Hai Zhong, 2007. "Equity in Pharmaceutical Utilization in Ontario: A Cross-Section and Over Time Analysis," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 33(4), pages 487-508, December.
    3. SØren Leth‐Petersen & Niels Skipper, 2014. "Income And The Use Of Prescription Drugs For Near Retirement Individuals," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 314-331, March.
    4. Paul Grootendorst, 2012. "Prescription Drug Insurance and Reimbursement," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Mark Stabile & Sarah Thomson, 2014. "The Changing Role of Government in Financing Health Care: An International Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(2), pages 480-518, June.
    6. Magnezi, Racheli & Weiss, Yossi & Cohen, Yossi & Shmueli, Amir, 2007. "Development of a capitation scale for IDF career soldiers in Israel," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 459-464, March.
    7. Baird, Katherine Elizabeth, 2016. "The incidence of high medical expenses by health status in seven developed countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 26-34.
    8. Goldman, Matt & Kaplan, David M., 2017. "Fractional order statistic approximation for nonparametric conditional quantile inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 196(2), pages 331-346.
    9. Paul V. Grootendorst & Michael R. Veall, 2005. "National Catastrophic Drug Insurance Revisited: Who Would Benefit from Senator Kirby's Recommendations?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 31(4), pages 341-358, December.
    10. Katherine Baird, 2018. "Including Private Health Care Costs in Measuring Nations’ Redistributive Effort," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 26(2), pages 1-21, July.
    11. Burcay Erus & Nazli Aktakke, 2012. "Impact of healthcare reforms on out-of-pocket health expenditures in Turkey for public insurees," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(3), pages 337-346, June.
    12. Herberholz, Chantal & Phuntsho, Sonam, 2021. "Medical, transportation and spiritual out-of-pocket health expenditure on outpatient and inpatient visits in Bhutan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 273(C).
    13. Yerramilli, Pooja & Fernández, Óscar & Thomson, Sarah, 2018. "Financial protection in Europe: a systematic review of the literature and mapping of data availability," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(5), pages 493-508.
    14. Crown William H. & Berndt Ernst R. & Baser Onur & Finkelstein Stan N. & Witt Whitney P. & Maguire Jonathan & Haver Kenan E., 2004. "Benefit Plan Design and Prescription Drug Utilization Among Asthmatics: Do Patient Copayments Matter?," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-35, January.
    15. Katherine Baird, 2018. "Accounting for Private Health Care Expenses in Measures of Nations’ Redistributive Effort," LIS Working papers 749, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    16. Daw, Jamie R. & Morgan, Steven G. & Thomson, Paige A. & Law, Michael R., 2013. "Here today, gone tomorrow: The issue attention cycle and national print media coverage of prescription drug financing in Canada," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 67-75.
    17. Sara Allin & Jeremiah Hurley, 2009. "Inequity in publicly funded physician care: what is the role of private prescription drug insurance?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(10), pages 1218-1232, October.
    18. Dahlia Balaban & Irfan Dhalla & Michael Law & Chaim Bell, 2013. "Private Expenditures on Brand Name Prescription Drugs after Generic Entry," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 11(5), pages 523-529, October.
    19. Raúl Del Pozo-Rubio & Isabel Pardo-García & Francisco Escribano-Sotos, 2020. "Financial Catastrophism Inherent with Out-of-Pocket Payments in Long Term Care for Households: A Latent Impoverishment," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-19, January.
    20. Katherine Baird, 2016. "The Incidence of High Medical Expenses by Health Status in Seven Developed Countries," LIS Working papers 670, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:ijhcfe:v:15:y:2015:i:3:p:329-338. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.