Health worker preferences for community-based health Insurance payment mechanisms: A discrete choice experiment
Robyn; Paul Jacob, Till Bärnighausen, Aurélia Souares, Germain Savadogo, Brice Bicaba, Ali Sié and Rainer Sauerborn, ILO, Research paper N°15, February 2012
Two important challenges in establishing and sustaining community-based insurance (CBI) schemes are low rates of community member enrolment and high lapse rates. These factors lead to low CBI coverage which in turn results in low levels of revenue for the risk carrier and limited risk-pooling, which leave CBI schemes financially and organisationally vulnerable to unexpected changes in incomes or high disease incidence.
In this paper, an experimental design is used to examine how the relationship between insurance providers and health care facilities - and more specifically payment mechanisms for services delivered by health workers - can influence uptake and renewals. The research discovers that the way health care workers are remunerated by the risk carrier can crucially determine CBI performance and quality of health services as payment mechanisms also influence the way healthcare is delivered.
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Health insurance participation: Experimental evidence from Kenya
Dercon; Stefan, Jan Willem Gunning, Andrew Zeitlin, Claudia Cerrone and Simone Lombardin, ILO Research paper N°10, January 2012
This paper describes the main findings of a field experiment offering health insurance in Kenya. It offers a discussion of the participation in a composite health insurance product offered to tea farmers living in the district of Nyeri, Kenya, and belonging to the Wananchi Savings and Credit Cooperative Society.
This paper documents several aspects of the study. First, it provides details of the population under study, with implications for the generalisations of experimental results from this to other contexts. Second, it presents the design and estimated causal impacts of policy treatments that were implemented as part of a randomised, controlled trial. Third, it provides descriptive evidence of the characteristics of those who bought insurance. These latter estimates should not be interpreted as causal, but rather are informative about the incidence of benefits from microinsurance interventions.
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Innovation Flash issue 12 available
The latest issue of the ILO's Microinsurance Innovation Facility newsletter includes an editorial from Alexia Latortue (CGAP) who reflects on the importance of focusing on demand.
The newsletter also highlights some of the lessons from the Facility's grantees, the webinar on partnership management, and thematic studies and publications.
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Microinsurance Matters: Issue 11
The new edition of MicroEnsure's newsletter focuses on the activities of the organisation and includes the following articles:
- Over half a million lives covered in Tanzania;
- Credit health launches in Ghana;
- Scaling up weather index microinsurance healthcare programmes;
- MicroEnsure Philippines responds to victims of typhoon Sendong.
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The Potential of Microinsurance
A.M. Best Co. Special Report, Market Review, March 2012
Throughout the world's emerging markets, insurers increasingly are inclined to include microinsurance in their long-term strategies. This special report provides an overview of this type of business, describes the typical participants and discusses its potential.
Microinsurance serves to improve coverage of basic human necessities in terms of business lines such as health, life, funeral, property and agriculture. Such micro policies transfer risk from low-income individuals, who do not have access to traditional insurance, to a group.
The report will be used as a basis for a webinar that will examine the current state of microinsurance including distribution, funding, regulation and potential growth. Click here for more information.
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Climate Change: A Microinsurance Perspective
Steinmann; Roland, Microinsurance Network, Discussion paper #2, February 2012
This discussion paper aims at stimulating the debate on the potential role of microinsurance in dealing with climate change as a long-term challenge and its impact on low-income people. The author argues that adaptation to a changing climate may be more important than protection through insurance. Insurance is not an appropriate tool to prevent climate change from unfolding.
Microinsurance may, however, facilitate and enhance adaptive investments and activities. Protecting investments made in a perspective of adaptation through insurance is certainly wise and offers plenty of room for innovative and useful products, including those for the low-income market.
The discussion paper will used as the basis for the Microinsurance debate: Climate change and microinsurance, which is an online discussion moderated by Roland Steinmann, that will focus on the potential role of microinsurance in dealing with climate change as a long-term challenge and its impact on low-income people. Click here for more information on how to join the debate.
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Savings in microinsurance: Lessons from India
Rusconi; Rob, Microinsurance Paper N°14, ILO, January 2012
This paper assesses four products that combine the benefits of insurance and saving offered by Indian insurers and targeting low-income customers. The assessment is timely, as many insurers have launched or are giving serious consideration to initiatives aimed at bringing insurance combined with saving to low-income customers.
The first section of this paper introduces the issues and presents a framework that is used for the product analysis. The products are then described in section two, highlighting the key characteristics that set each apart. This leads to section three, the heart of the discussion, which draws and explains a number of important lessons from this analysis. There are few easy decisions and prospective participants in this market need to think carefully about the most important needs of their customers, converting the needs into product design and then balancing out a range of difficult trade-offs.
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