Recent Studies from Bocconi University Add New Data to Health Planning and Management (Inequalities in the benefits of national health insurance on financial protection from out-of-pocket payments and access to health services: cross-sectional …)

2019 SEP 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health & Medicine Business Daily -- New research on Health and Medicine - Health Planning and Management is the subject of a report. According to news reporting out of Milan, Italy, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “A central pillar of universal health coverage (UHC) is to achieve financial protection from catastrophic health expenditure. There are concerns, however, that national health insurance programmes with premiums may not benefit impoverished groups.”

Funders for this research include Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Forderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Direktion fur Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, SDC.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Bocconi University, “In 2003, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to introduce a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) with progressively structured premium charges. In this study, we test the impact of being insured on utilization and financial risk protection compared with no enrolment, using the 2012-13 Ghana Living Standards Survey (n=72 372). Consistent with previous studies, we observed that participating in health insurance significantly decreased the probability of unmet medical needs by 15 percentage points (p.p.) and that of incurring catastrophic out-of-pocket (OOP) health payments by 7 p.p. relative to no enrolment in the NHIS. Households living outside a 1-h radius to the nearest hospital had lower reductions in financial risk from excess OOP medical spending relative to households living closer (-5 p.p. vs -9 p.p.). We also find evidence that in Ghana, the scheme was highly pro-poor. Once insured, the poorest 40% of households experienced significantly larger improvements in medical utilization (18 p.p. vs. 8 p.p.) and substantively larger reductions in catastrophic OOP health expenditure (-10 p.p. vs. -6 p.p.) compared with that of the richest households. However, health insurance did not benefit vulnerable persons equally from financial risk. Once insured, poor, low-educated and self-employed households living far from hospitals had significantly lower reductions in catastrophic OOP medical spending compared with their counterparts living closer. Taken together, we show that enrolment in the NHIS is associated with improved financial protection but less so among geographically remote vulnerable groups.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Efforts to boost not just insurance uptake but also health service delivery may be needed as a supplement for insurance schemes to accelerate progress towards UHC.”

For more information on this research see: Inequalities in the benefits of national health insurance on financial protection from out-of-pocket payments and access to health services: cross-sectional evidence from Ghana. Health Policy and Planning, 2019;():. Health Policy and Planning can be contacted at: Oxford Univ Press, Great Clarendon St, Oxford OX2 6DP, England. (Oxford University Press - http://www.oup.com/; Health Policy and Planning - heapol.oxfordjournals.org)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting L. Fiestas Navarrete, Dept. of Social and Political Science, Bocconi University, Via Roentgen 1, Milan, Italy. Additional authors for this research include S. Ghislandi, D. Stuckler and F. Tediosi.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czz093. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Publisher contact information for the journal Health Policy and Planning is: Oxford Univ Press, Great Clarendon St, Oxford OX2 6DP, England.

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