Use of health services according to income before and after elimination of copayment in Germany and restriction of universal health coverage in Spain
Fecha
2018Autor
Versión
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Tipo
Artículo / Artikulua
Versión
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa
Impacto
|
10.1186/s12939-018-0725-0
Resumen
Background: In Germany copayment for medical consultation was eliminated in 2013, and in Spain universal
health coverage was partly restricted in 2012. This study shows the relationship between income and the use of
health services before and after these measures in each country.
Methods: Data were taken from the 2009 and 2014 Socio-Economic Panel conducted in Germany, and from the
2009 and 2 ...
[++]
Background: In Germany copayment for medical consultation was eliminated in 2013, and in Spain universal
health coverage was partly restricted in 2012. This study shows the relationship between income and the use of
health services before and after these measures in each country.
Methods: Data were taken from the 2009 and 2014 Socio-Economic Panel conducted in Germany, and from the
2009 and 2014 European Health Surveys in Spain. The health services investigated were physician consultations and
hospital admissions, and the measure of socioeconomic position used was household income. The magnitude of
the relationship between socioeconomic position and the use of each health service in people from 16 to 74 years
old was estimated by calculating the percentage ratio using binary regression.
Results: In Germany, after adjusting for age, sex, and need for care, in the model comparing the two lower income
categories to the two higher categories, the percentage ratio for physician consultation was 0.97 (95% CI 0.96–0.99) in
2009 and 0.98 (95% CI 0.97–0.99) in 2014, and the percentage ratio for hospitalization was 1.01 (95% CI 0.93–1.10) in 2009
and 1.16 (95% CI 1.08–1.25) in 2014. In Spain, after adjusting for age, sex, and self-rated health, the percentage ratio for
physician consultation was 0.99 (95% CI 0.94–1.05) in 2009 and 1.08 (95% CI 1.03–1.14) in 2014, and the percentage ratio
for hospitalization was 1.04 (95% CI 0.92–1.18) in 2009 and 0.99 (95% CI 0.87–1.14) in 2014.
Conclusion: The results suggest that elimination of the copayment in Germany did not change the frequency of
physician consultations, whereas after the restriction of universal health coverage in Spain, subjects with lower incomes
had a higher frequency of physician consultations. [--]
Materias
Use of health services,
Inequalities,
Income position,
Germany,
Spain,
Great recession,
Copayment
Editor
BioMed Central
Publicado en
International Journal For Equity In Health, (2018) 17:11
Departamento
Universidad Pública de Navarra. Departamento de Sociología /
Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa. Soziologia Saila
Versión del editor
Entidades Financiadoras
This study was supported by a grant from the “Plan Estatal de I + D + I”, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain (no. CSO2013–40877-P).
Aparece en las colecciones
Los documentos de Academica-e están protegidos por derechos de autor con todos los derechos reservados, a no ser que se indique lo contrario.
La licencia del ítem se describe como © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.