Department of Cardiology, Heraklion University Hospital, PO Box 1352 Stavrakia, Heraklion, Crete 711 10, Greece.
Expert Rev Pharmacoecon Outcomes Res. 2014 Feb;14(1):5-8. doi: 10.1586/14737167.2014.859526. Epub 2013 Dec 2.
Economic crisis drives many governments into drastic spending cuts in order to minimize their healthcare costs, resulting in an increase of out-of-pocket payment. This causes mainly the most vulnerable social groups, not only in poor countries, to lose their access to quality care and their ability to pay, and leads them in to catastrophic healthcare expenditures. Questions about whether health spending can be catastrophic rise across nations where there is an income reduction, unemployment and serious or chronic illness. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death today. The first cost-of-illness study, which estimated the costs of cardiovascular disease in the EU in 2003, found them to be €169 billion a year, while the most recent, in 2009, estimated them at nearly €196 billion a year. Financial protection measures must be taken by governments in order to protect their citizens, particularly the most vulnerable ones.
经济危机迫使许多政府大幅削减开支，以尽量降低医疗成本，导致自费支出增加。这主要使最脆弱的社会群体（不仅在贫穷国家）失去获得高质量医疗的机会和支付能力，并使他们陷入灾难性的医疗支出。在收入减少、失业和严重或慢性疾病的国家，关于医疗支出是否可能造成灾难性后果的问题不断出现。心血管疾病是当今头号死因。第一项疾病成本研究估计了 2003 年欧盟心血管疾病的成本，发现每年为 1690 亿欧元，而最近的一项研究估计 2009 年每年近 1960 亿欧元。各国政府必须采取财务保护措施，以保护其公民，特别是最脆弱的公民。
