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The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania
BACKGROUND: Lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) have a common goal to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) through voluntary health insurance schemes. This is important to improve access to healthcare services and ensure financial protection for all by reducing out-of-pocket expenditures. This...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10067166/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37004684 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-023-00432-z |
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author | Kagaigai, Alphoncina Grepperud, Sverre |
author_facet | Kagaigai, Alphoncina Grepperud, Sverre |
author_sort | Kagaigai, Alphoncina |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) have a common goal to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) through voluntary health insurance schemes. This is important to improve access to healthcare services and ensure financial protection for all by reducing out-of-pocket expenditures. This study aimed to examine the role of risk preferences on enrollment status (currently insured, previously insured, and never insured) into a Tanzanian voluntary health insurance scheme targeted at the informal sector. METHODS: Data were collected from households in a random sample of 722 respondents. The risk preference measure was based on a hypothetical lottery game which applies the BJKS instrument. This instrument measures income risk where the respondents are to choose between a certain income and a lottery. Both multinomial and simple logistic regression models have been used to analyze the relationship between risk aversion and enrollment status. RESULTS: On average, the respondents have a high degree of risk aversion, and the insured are more risk averse than the uninsured (previously insured and never insured). There is a weak tendency for the wealthiest, measured by household income or total household expenditure, to be somewhat more risk averse than the less wealthy. Logistic and multinomial logistic regressions show that risk aversion is strongly associated with enrollment status. A higher degree of risk aversion significantly increases the probability of being insured, relative to being previously insured, and relative to being never insured. CONCLUSION: Risk aversion matters in a decision to enroll into the iCHF scheme. Strengthening the benefit package for the scheme, might increase the enrollment rate and hence improve access to healthcare services for people in rural areas and those employed in the informal sector. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10067166 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100671662023-04-03 The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania Kagaigai, Alphoncina Grepperud, Sverre Health Econ Rev Research BACKGROUND: Lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) have a common goal to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) through voluntary health insurance schemes. This is important to improve access to healthcare services and ensure financial protection for all by reducing out-of-pocket expenditures. This study aimed to examine the role of risk preferences on enrollment status (currently insured, previously insured, and never insured) into a Tanzanian voluntary health insurance scheme targeted at the informal sector. METHODS: Data were collected from households in a random sample of 722 respondents. The risk preference measure was based on a hypothetical lottery game which applies the BJKS instrument. This instrument measures income risk where the respondents are to choose between a certain income and a lottery. Both multinomial and simple logistic regression models have been used to analyze the relationship between risk aversion and enrollment status. RESULTS: On average, the respondents have a high degree of risk aversion, and the insured are more risk averse than the uninsured (previously insured and never insured). There is a weak tendency for the wealthiest, measured by household income or total household expenditure, to be somewhat more risk averse than the less wealthy. Logistic and multinomial logistic regressions show that risk aversion is strongly associated with enrollment status. A higher degree of risk aversion significantly increases the probability of being insured, relative to being previously insured, and relative to being never insured. CONCLUSION: Risk aversion matters in a decision to enroll into the iCHF scheme. Strengthening the benefit package for the scheme, might increase the enrollment rate and hence improve access to healthcare services for people in rural areas and those employed in the informal sector. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2023-04-01 /pmc/articles/PMC10067166/ /pubmed/37004684 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-023-00432-z Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Kagaigai, Alphoncina Grepperud, Sverre The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania |
title | The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania |
title_full | The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania |
title_fullStr | The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania |
title_full_unstemmed | The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania |
title_short | The role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural Tanzania |
title_sort | role of risk preferences: voluntary health insurance in rural tanzania |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10067166/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37004684 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13561-023-00432-z |
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