An analysis of out of pocket payments for healthcare in Jordan

Out of Pocket (OOP) payments for healthcare include any payment made directly to the providers. OOP payments for healthcare are an important source of healthcare financing but may have undesirable effects from an equity perspective. Various approaches are used to evaluate whether the relationship between ability to pay and OOP health expenditure is progressive. These are the proportion approach, the multivariate approach, and the index approach. The purpose of this study is to analyze households' OOP payments for healthcare in Jordan. For the purpose of this study secondary data of Household Expenditures and Income Survey 2017/2018 conducted by the Jordan Department of Statistics' was used. A total of 1922 households were analyzed in terms of OOP healthcare payments. Most households were in Amman (27,7%) and (85,3%) live in urban areas. 22,3% of the households have an income of 5001-7500 Jordanian dinars. When the distribution of share of OOP healthcare payments in income was examined it was seen that the most financial burden for OOP healthcare payments were in the group with an income of 2500 and less. Key Words: Equity, Health expenditure, Health financing, Out of Pocket Payments.