Healthcare financing should be equitable to ensure equal access to quality care and financial risk protection from exorbitant health care costs, through social health protection. In many low and middle income countries including Kenya, changes to healthcare financing systems are being implemented as a means of providing equitable access to healthcare with the aim of attaining universal health coverage. Vertical equity means that people of different levels of ability to pay make different contributions to the healthcare financing system. Vertical equity can be analysed by measuring progressivity. In this peer reviewed article, the authors analysed progressivity by measuring deviations from the proportionality in the relationship between sources of healthcare financing and ability to pay using Kakwani indices applied to data from the 2007 Kenya household health utilisation and expenditures survey.
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