Reports Outline Anthropology and Medicine Study Results from University of Edinburgh (‘having the Card Makes Us Feel Worthless’: the Negative Value of Government-funded Health Insurance In India): Science – Anthropology and Medicine

2024 FEB 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Researchers detail new data in Science - Anthropology and Medicine. According to news originating from Edinburgh, United Kingdom, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Since the 2000s, hundreds of government-funded health insurance (GFHI) schemes were introduced in India. These schemes are meant to prevent poorer households from incurring catastrophic health expenditures.”

Financial support for this research came from Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of Edinburgh, “Through GFHIs, policy-makers want to mobilize the decision-making powers of private consumers in a liberalized healthcare market. Patients are called upon to act as ‘co-creators’ of healthcare value by optimizing supply through demand. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with insurance users in South India, we argue that GFHIs fail because people experience the value of insurance in drastically different ways that only partly overlap with how the policy assumes they value insurance.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “In addition, the hollow promises of health coverage can be experienced as so frustrating that signing up for health insurance actually makes people feel devalued.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: ‘having the Card Makes Us Feel Worthless’: the Negative Value of Government-funded Health Insurance In India. Anthropology and Medicine, 2023. Anthropology and Medicine can be contacted at: Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2-4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon OX14 4RN, Oxon, England.

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Stefan Ecks, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2023.2291738. 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.

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