Out of Pocket Health Care Expenditure and the Poverty Trend in the Seven Sisters and the Himalayan State of India

Out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure on health care has got capacity to impact the households negatively. It can push the people into poverty and into poverty trap to those who are already poor. Therefore, it is important that the strategy to mitigate the menace of poverty have got to focus on the health sector as well, lest the action becomes one-sided. It is seen amongst the north eastern states (NES), the level of poverty increasing from 2004–05 to 2009–10 in all the states except in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Sikkim. Thus, this paper tries to look into the OOP spending of the north eastern states of India on health care based on 71st National Sample Survey Organizations, India. It has been found that those states which are having universal health coverage schemes have lesser OOP expenditures on health care and they could also lessen their number of poverty. Furthermore, the paper found that the urban OOP spending is higher than the rural OOP spending in the north eastern states, thus, contradicting the earlier studies which postulate that rural spending is usually higher than the urban OOP spending. This could be because in the region (NES) people mostly depend on subsidized government health care services irrespective of their quality. Another reason could be, in the region rural areas are basically dominated by the poor and tribal people who are illiterate and less informed and those who have less financial capacity to seek health care unless met with emergency health shocks.