Willingness to join and pay social health insurance and associated factors among public sectors workers in Didu Woreda, South West Ethiopia, 2018

INTRODUCTION: Cost-sharing between beneficiaries and governments is critical to achieving universal health care coverage. To address this, Ethiopia is currently introducing social health insurance. Therefore, the current study aimed to assess the willingness and associated factors to join and pay social health insurance among public sectors workers in Didu Woreda, southwest Ethiopia. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted from April 15 to 30, 2018 on 280 public sector workers of Didu Woreda. Stratified and simple random sampling techniques were used, and data were collected using a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to a compute crude odd ratio with its 95% confidence interval to test the associations between dependent and independent variables and a p-Value of 0.05 with a confidence interval of 95% was used to declare the level of statistical significance. RESULTS: About 47.5% of participants were willing to join for the suggested insurance scheme these about 58% of those who were willing to join are willing to pay 3% of their monthly salary that was proposed. Willingness to join was significantly associated with the age of respondents, marital status, job description, how much paid, the satisfaction of the respondents, and previous history of borrowing money for the medical service fees. CONCLUSION: Willingness to join and pay in this study was found to be 47.5% and 58% respectively. Therefore, adequate awareness creation and discussion should be made with all employees.