In addition, households that benefited from Korea's medical aid program had significantly lower catastrophic health expenditure rates.
Our results showed that households that benefited from Korea's medical aid program had significantly lower catastrophic health expenditure rates, which is likely due to the fact that medical aid beneficiaries have very low OOP health payments.
Families in the lowest of incomes who had not joined Korea's medical aid program were 3.4 times more likely to experience catastrophic health expenditure than families who had joined.
In this study, households headed by women and middle-aged individuals (40 59 years) had significantly lower catastrophic health expenditure rates, as did households that benefited from Korea's medical aid program.
Despite the enhanced security provided by Korea's medical aid program in the time period studied, the rate of catastrophic health expenditure actually increased from 2007 to 2008, and further research is needed to determine the cause.
In addition, we analyzed the association between membership in Korea's medical aid program, which is similar to Medicaid in the United State of America, and catastrophic health expenditure for households in the lowest 5, 10, 15, and 20% of incomes.
Households in the lowest 20% of incomes that did not receive assistance from Korea's medical aid program were 3.4 times more likely to experience catastrophic health expenditure than households that did receive assistance.
We obtained the claim data of the hospitals included in the study from the HIRA, the organization that reviews all the claims of the entire population of South Korea, regardless of whether they belong to the national health insurance or the medical aid program.
We drove straight to a meeting at the headquarters of the Fométro, the Fonds Médical Tropical, a nongovernmental organization that operated much of Belgium's vast program for medical aid in Central Africa.
Since that time Kathleen has worked to create and launch The Vaseline® Healing Project, an international aid program designed to provide dermatological care, medical aid and Vaseline® products to people living in the wake of crisis and disaster.
