Treatment as insurance: HIV antiretroviral therapy offers financial risk protection in Malawi

Many countries have expanded insurance programmes in an effort to achieve universal health coverage (UHC). We assess a complementary path toward financial risk protection: increased access to technologies that improve health and reduce the risk of large health expenditures. Malawi has provided free HIV treatment since 2004 with significant US Government support. We investigate the impact of treatment access on medical spending, capacity to pay and catastrophic health expenditures at the population level, exploiting the phased rollout of HIV treatment in a difference-in-differences design. We find that increased access to HIV treatment generated a 10% decline in medical spending for urban households, a 7% increase in capacity to pay for rural households and a 3-percentage point decrease in the likelihood of catastrophic health expenditure among urban households. These risk protection benefits are comparable to that found from broad-based insurance coverage in other contexts. Our findings show that targeted treatment programmes that provide free care for high burden causes of death can provide substantial financial risk protection against catastrophic health expenditure, while moving developing nations toward UHC.