Recent Studies from Community Health Solutions Add New Data to Health Services Research (Exploring willingness to pay for health insurance and preferences for a benefits package from the perspective of women from low-income households of …)

2021 MAY 10 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Research findings on health services research are discussed in a new report. According to news reporting out of the Community Health Solutions by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) and reduction in out of pocket (OOP) expenditures on health, is a critical target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In low-middle income countries, micro-health insurance (MHI) schemes have emerged as a useful financing tool for laying grounds for Universal Health Coverage.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Community Health Solutions: “The aim of this study was to provide evidence for designing a feasible health insurance scheme targeted at urban poor, by exploring preferences for an insurance benefits package and co-payments among women from low-income households in Karachi, Pakistan. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study, conducted using household surveys between July-August 2015. A total of 167 female beneficiaries of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), a large-scale cash transfer scheme targeted at low-income households, were recruited in Karachi through a mix of convenience and snowball sampling. Hypothetical insurance benefits packages for a prospective health insurance scheme were formulated to capture respondents’ preferences for health insurance benefits package and co-payments. All data was analyzed using Stata (version 13). Respondents reporting expenditure on OPD and hospitalization in the last 2 weeks were 93.4 and 11.9% respectively. The highest median expenditure was incurred on medicines. Out of the proposed benefits package, a majority (53%) of the study participants opted for the comprehensive benefits package that provided coverage for emergency care, hospitalization, OPD consultation, diagnostic tests and transportation. For the co-payment plan, 38.9% participants preferred no co-payments that is 100% insurance coverage of medicines followed by hospitalization (25.9%). Nearly half of the respondents (49.4%) chose outpatient consultation for 50% co-payment. A majority of the participants (65.3%) agreed to 100% co-payment for the transportation cost.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Health insurance schemes can be introduced in urban areas, against collection of micro-payments, to prevent low-income households from facing financial catastrophe. A comprehensive benefits package covering emergency care, hospitalization, OPD consultation, diagnostic tests and transportation, is the most preferred among low-income beneficiaries.”

For more information on this research see: Exploring willingness to pay for health insurance and preferences for a benefits package from the perspective of women from low-income households of Karachi, Pakistan. BMC Health Services Research, 2021,21(1):1-9. (BMC Health Services Research - http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Health Services Research is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06403-6.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Shifa Salman Habib, Community Health Solutions.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)