the projection of iran’s healthcare expenditures by 2030: evidence of a time-series analysis

Background: the projection of levels and composition of financial resources for the healthcare expenditure (hce) and relevant trends can provide a basis for future health financing reforms. this study aimed to project iran’s hces by the sources of funds until 2030. methods: the structural macro-econometric modeling in the eviews 9 software was employed to simulate and project iran’s hce by the sources of funds (government health expenditure [ghce], social security organization health expenditure [sohce], out-of-pocket [oop] payments, and prepaid private health expenditure [pphce]). the behavioral equations were estimated by autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) approach. results: if there is a 5%-increase in iran’s oil revenues, the mean growth rate of gross domestic product (gdp) is about 2% until 2030. by this scenario, the total hce (thce), ghce, sohce, oop, and pphce increases about 30.5%, 25.9%, 34.4%, 31.2%, and 33.9%, respectively. therefore, the thce as a percentage of the gdp will increase from 9.6% in 2016 to 10.7% in 2030. it is predicted that iran’s thce will cover 22.2%, 23.3%, 40%, and 14.5% by the government, social security organization (sso), households oop, and other private sources, respectively, in 2030. conclusion: until 2030, iran’s health expenditures will grow faster than the gdp, government revenues, and non-health spending. despite the increase in ghce and total government expenditure, the share of the ghce from thce has a decreasing trend. oop payments remain among the major sources of financing for iran’s hce.