Willingness to accept capitation payment system under the Ghana National Health Insurance Policy: do income levels matter?

This research was set to examine the factors influencing the willingness and the likelihood of Ghanaians to accept the capitation payment system under the National Health Insurance Scheme. Data was collected through the random sampling method in all the ten regions of Ghana. A probit estimation with marginal effects was adopted to examine the factors influencing the willingness and the likelihood while the generalized Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition was used to examine the extent to which individual characteristics influence the acceptance gap between high income and low-income earners. Our results indicated that, at the individual level, high income, being employed, awareness and smaller household size were the significant factors influencing the willingness and the likelihood to accept capitation. We also observed that the acceptance gap between high income and low-income earners was largely influenced by unexplained factors other than individual characteristics of high income earners. Since the willingness and the likelihood to accept capitation are mixed across regions and largely dependent on high incomes, the intention to roll out and implement the capitation system should be as a complementary payment system to the already existing one, being the diagnosis related grouping. We recommend that the current payment system, the diagnosis-related-grouping be maintained and complemented with capitation while measures to reduce, if not eliminate, the abuse associated with it be put in place. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13561-017-0175-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.