Health Insurance & Health Care Utilization in Uganda

Table of content

INTRODUCTION3

Aim and objectives5

Significance of the study6

METHOD AND MATERIAL6

RESULTS9

General characteristics of the respondents9

Insurance status and seeking healthcare10

Discussion20

Conclusion26

REFERENCES28

Health Insurance & Health Care Utilization in Uganda

INTRODUCTION

Health care financing is one critical issue in an individual and a society's health since it determines the amount of resources available for an individual to spend on health and this in turn will determine their health status since income/ resource is a health determinant. Health financing systems also vary across the world from national health insurance services (Universal Health insurance coverage), to multiple health insurance providers and voluntary health insurance and parallel systems. People in most of the low income countries pay for their health care costs through the use of out of pocket expenses (OOP). Health insurance schemes are however now being recognized as a tool for financing health care provision in low income countries (1).

This is good because it enables pooling of risks and transferring health care costs away to premiums (2) Some of the low income countries have social Health Insurance schemes and yet most do not have and as such the people end up joining private health insurance schemes that are provided through their employers or that they join personally and even then only a few people in the population are using health insurance. This leads to more of high out of pocket expenses on the part of the people and this has some adverse effects on the people for example people may be forced not to use health services or even to discontinue treatment that they had started. They may also be deprived of other basic needs and sink further into poverty (3), which also has an impact on their health. It is therefore very important for people to have health insurance in order to be protected from such catastrophic impacts.

In Uganda, quite a small number of the people in the population are insured, and mainly the elite working group. Such private insurance schemes are still at their infancy and cover less than 1% of the population in key urban areas especially Kampala (4). One wonders whether health insurance increases healthcare utilisation. According to economic theory this is possible since health insurance tends to decrease the price or amount of money that an individual pays for health/ medical care and as such, the equilibrium quantity of medical care used will have to increase.(5). Subject to other factors being held constant. The issue or question of the role of or impact of health insurance on health care utilization is a very complex one. This is because sometimes having health insurance encourages people to seek healthcare, and yet in some cases it may actually inhibit some from seeking healthcare and even sometimes, other factors apart from insurance status may make a person to seek health care or utilize healthcare. This needs to be researched in order to clarify the issue. Previous studies done on this include observational studies which however may have ...