Investigation of Moral Hazard Deportments in Community-Based Health Insurance in Guto Gida District, Western Ethiopia: A Qualitative Study

INTRODUCTION: Ethiopia introduced CBHI in 2011 as part of the health sector finance improvement. This study was accompanied to identify moral hazard behaviors in community-based health insurance in Guto Gida District of Oromia regional state. METHODS: The qualitative study used data generated from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. Three health service centers were purposively selected for the study. Thematic analysis was accomplished using the NVivo-12 software package as it operates better in qualitative data analysis. RESULTS: The study found that member’s frequent visit to health service centers, tendency to collect more drugs, sense of feeling cheated by the insurance, tendency to use their cards redundantly, giving their cards to nonmembers, and seeking for most often expensive drugs were the demand side moral hazard behaviors explored by the study. From the supply side, inflating the price of drugs, increasing the price of services, alleging for services not provided, overstating the number of customers obtained insurance package and insulting users are found as moral hazard problems. CONCLUSION: The study concluded that moral hazard behavior is discouraging from both the demand and supply sides. The presence of moral hazard discourages members of CBHI and creates reluctances in the scheme officials and workers. The policy implication is that tremendous attention should be given to reducing the level of moral hazard behaviors from the sides of both users and providers.