Study Results from Palladium Update Understanding of Health Policy (Willingness and ability to pay for health insurance in Afghanistan): Health and Medicine – Health Policy

2022 DEC 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in health policy. According to news originating from Kabul, Afghanistan, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “The study assessed willingness to join and willingness to pay for health-insurance in Afghanistan and identified associated determinants.”

Funders for this research include United States Agency For International Development.

The news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Palladium: “A household survey was conducted. Two health-insurance and two medicine-insurance packages were explained to respondents, who were then asked if they would be willing to join the packages and pay for them. The double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method was used to elicit the maximum amount respondents would be willing to pay for the various benefit packages. Logistic and linear regression models were used to examine determinants of willingness to join and willingness to pay. Most respondents had never heard of health insurance. And yet, when they were told about it, the vast majority of respondents said they would be willing to join one of the four benefit packages and pay for them, ranging from 70.7% for a medicine-only package that included only essential medicines, to 92.4% for a health-insurance package that would cover only primary and secondary care.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “The average willingness to pay cost was 1,236 (US$21.3), 1,512 (US$26.0), 778 (US$13.4) and 430 (US$7.4) Afghani per person, per year for the primary and secondary; comprehensive primary, secondary and some tertiary; all medicine; and essential medicine packages; respectively. Key determinants of willingness to join, and to pay were similar, including the provinces where respondents were located, wealth status, health expenditures and some demographic characteristics.”

For more information on this research see: Willingness and ability to pay for health insurance in Afghanistan. Health Policy Open, 2022,3():100076. The publisher for Health Policy Open is Elsevier.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hpopen.2022.100076.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Ajmal Behzad, Palladium, Kabul, Afghanistan. Additional authors for this research include Irit Sinai, Omarizaman Sayedi, Karim Alawi, Farhad Farewar, Wu Zeng.

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