Knowledge, Coverage and Usage Patterns of Health Insurance in Rural South India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37506/ijphrd.v11i3.834Keywords:
Health Insurance, Out of pocket expenditure, Enrolment, Utilisation.Abstract
Introduction: Out-of-pocket payments by individual households are the main source of health care financing
in India. Contrary to most other consumption expenses, medical expenditure is largely unpredictable both in
timing and quantity. Households, especially in low income countries, cope either by divesting their savings,
borrowing, mortgaging or selling assets or by forgoing treatment.
Aim: To study the knowledge, coverage and usage patterns of health insurance in a rural area of south India.
Method: A community based cross sectional study was done in a village in south India. Data was collected
by questionnaire method among the heads of the selected households and analysed.
Results: This study found that 30.4% households were enrolled in a health insurance scheme. Among the
eligible households only 14.5% were aware about government funded health insurance schemes. Highest
enrolment was in Sampoorna Suraksha Scheme 33 (47.1%), followed by ESI 21 (30%). Among the enrolled
households 118 (51.4%) had utilised it in the past one year.
Conclusion: Presently people are getting aware of health insurance, through acquaintances, health insurance
agents, mass media etc., but this awareness has not yet resulted in satisfactory levels of enrolment/utilisation.
As the results have shown, only 30.4% of households are being covered by some form of health insurance
scheme, a large chunk of the population is still financing health care expenditure without health insurance
coverage. Moreover it was observed that a large proportion of the eligible households were unaware about
Government funded Health insurance schemes.