Paying the Price: A deep dive into the household economic burden of care experienced by people living with noncommunicable diseases

This policy report, authored by the NCD Alliance and The George Institute for Global Health, provides a thorough examination of the economic burden of noncommunicable diseases on households and the mechanisms to reduce out of pocket payments experienced by people living with NCDs.

The economic burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) on households poses major challenges to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1, which calls for an end to poverty in all its manifestations by 2030, as well as SDG Target 3.8 on Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Many governments, particularly in high-income countries (HICs), directly finance healthcare costs for their populations, while this is more rarely the case in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, various mechanisms, particularly public insurance, have been introduced by several countries to reduce household out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures. This report aims to determine what the impact of these mechanisms has been for people living with NCDs.