Can people afford to pay for health care? New evidence on financial protection in Greece

Overview

This review is part of a series of country-based studies generating new evidence on affordable access to health care (‎financial protection)‎ in Europe and central Asia. Financial protection is central to universal health coverage and a core dimension of health system performance. The incidence of catastrophic health spending is higher in Greece than in many European Union countries. It is consistently heavily concentrated in households with low incomes, who mainly spend on outpatient medicines and outpatient care. Inpatient care and dental care are larger drivers of catastrophic health spending in richer households. Unmet need for health care, dental care and prescribed medicines is consistently above the European Union average, driven mainly by cost and marked by stark income inequality, particularly for prescribed medicines. The economic crisis – and budgetary cuts and other measures introduced in response to the crisis – exposed underlying weaknesses in health care coverage and its lack of resilience to shocks. Financial protection deteriorated, with catastrophic health spending and unmet need rising rapidly as rates of unemployment and poverty soared. Although financial protection improved on average after the economic crisis, financial hardship and unmet need in the poorest households are not much better now than during the crisis, reflecting continued underfunding of the health system and persistent gaps in coverage.