catastrophic health spending

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a situation in which a household's out-of-pocket health expenditures exceed a defined threshold — typically ten percent of total household consumption expenditure, or twenty-five percent of non-food expenditure — causing severe financial hardship, depletion of savings, sale of assets, or borrowing that can push the household into poverty or prevent recovery from poverty; the World Health Organization and World Bank use catastrophic health spending as a key indicator of health system performance and progress toward universal health coverage; it disproportionately affects the poor, the elderly, and households with members suffering from chronic or catastrophic illness; reducing catastrophic health spending requires expanding insurance coverage, removing user fees, strengthening primary care to prevent costly hospitalisation, and ensuring affordable access to essential medicines