Equidade nos pagamentos directos dos cuidados de saúde em Portugal: uma análise global e por NUTS II

Abstract

Equity is a central goal of health policy and is in fact among the performance indicators used by WHO to evaluate health systems. The objective of this study is to analyse equity in the financing of health care, for the case of out-of-pocket payments, in Portugal, for total payments and for each of its components. The analysis is further disaggregated by regions NUTS II. Data  come  from  the  National  Health  Survey 2005/06  and  the  methodology  is  based  on  the technique of concentration curves and indexes. The results suggest that payments are regressive, globally and for each item. Inequity in financing is greater for the case of medicines and lower for the case of diagnostic tests. Regarding the geographic analysis, the  progressivity  index  is  greater  for Algarve  and lower for Azores.