Does the Medical Insurance Siglo XXI have the potential to reduce neonatal and under-5 mortality rate in Mexico?

Autor: Reyes López Alfonso

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Public health insurance programs designed specifically to deliver financial protection to families outside the social security systems were implemented in Mexico 10 years ago. Evaluations of these programs have focused on economic and some health outcomes, but few studies have analyzed the contribution of the mentioned programs to the reduction of neonatal and under-5 mortality rate. In this volume of the Boletín Médico del Hospital Infantil de México, the work presented by Flores-Huerta et al. is an interesting attempt to this purpose resulting in new questions to be investigated. The authors used data from the Medical Insurance Siglo XXI Survey. They used the percentage of families with out-of-pocket health spending as an effectiveness measure of the program because affiliated families should be receiving financial protection against disease events as well as for prevention. Among the surveyed subjects that reported children’s deaths, the authors found a significantly high proportion of households with out-of-pocket health spending, being more pronounced for the post-neonatal stage onwards. However, out-of-pocket data could be interpreted as a result of inadequate operation of the program leading to incomplete information about the benefits that affiliated families have to face health problems, coupled with the poor quality of care at the public healthcare facilities. The correlation between out-of-pocket health spending and mortality as presented by the authors does not help to understand the contribution of the Medical Insurance Siglo XXI to the reduction of neonatal and under-5 mortality rate.

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2015-02-12   |   1,896 visitas   |   Evalua este artículo 0 valoraciones

Vol. 71 Núm.5. Septiembre-Octubre 2014 Pags. 259-260 Bol Med Hosp Infant Mex 2014; 71(5)