Hungary has suffered from years of government mismanagement, corruption and chronic deficit spending that predates Mr. Orban's election in 2010.
Whether it is the frequency of visits to a doctor or how often people have diagnostic tests or how much time people with chronic diseases spend in intensive care units or how often they are hospitalized, the data are consistent, he says: the greater the supply, the greater the use.
Individuals with at least three chronic diseases spent about 67% (SSM) respectively 97% (2 PM) more on OOP payments compared to their reference group - people without chronic diseases.
Informal carers with chronic illness spent more time managing their own health than people with chronic illness who were not informal carers.
While increased morbidity was associated with increased time use, informal carers with chronic illnesses spent more time caring for others than engaging in activities associated with their own health care.
Bittman and colleagues also reported that carers of people with a functional impairment (including but not limited to impairments related to chronic illness) spend considerably more time engaging in cooking and cleaning activities than non-carers [ 24].
The outstanding finding from these results is that informal carers with a chronic illness spent more time on their own HRA than respondents who were not informal carers, and when this was combined with their time caring for others, spent between four and nine times as long on HRA as non-carers.
Among the letters Judge Hellerstein read aloud was one from Rudy Washington, a former deputy mayor who said he suffered from asthma and chronic infections after spending every day at ground zero for more than three months.
The German system scored high, too, when it came to out-of-pocket expenses: Only 13% of those with a chronic condition reported spending more than $1,000 in the past year, compared with 41% in the U.S. "I personally would prefer for the private system to die," says Karl Lauterbach, professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne.
France also faces slow growth, high levels of public spending, chronic budget deficits, and rising public debt.
