Quantifying the financial burden of households' out-of-pocket payments on medicines in India: a repeated cross-sectional analysis of National Sample Survey data, 1994-2014.

Purchase of medicines constitutes the single largest component of the total OOP payments by households. Hence, strengthening government intervention in providing medicines free in public healthcare facilities has the potential to considerably reduce medicine-related spending and total OOP payments of households and reduction in OOP-induced poverty.