The October Edition of Lancet Global Health has published a research article on catastrophic health expenditure during the COVID 19 Pandemic in 2020 in five countries with available household expenditure data: Belarus, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Viet Nam.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health systems in 2020, but it is unclear how financial hardship due to out-of-pocket (OOP) healthcare costs was affected. The paper analysed catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) in 2020 in five countries with available household expenditure data: Belarus, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Viet Nam. In Mexico and Peru, and also conducted an analysis of drivers of change in CHE in 2020 using publicly available data.
In three of the five countries studied, health systems either did not protect people from the financial risks of health care or did not maintain healthcare access in 2020, an indication of health systems failing to maintain basic functions. If the 2020 response to the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated shifts to private healthcare use, policies to cover costs in that sector or motivate patients to return to the public sector are needed to maintain financial risk protection.