Community based microinsurance has aroused much interest and hope in meeting health care challenges that face the poor. In this paper we explore how institutional rigidities, such as credit constraint, affect the demand for health insurance and how insurance could potentially prevent poor households from falling into the poverty trap. In this setting, we argue that the appropriate public interv...

De Allegri et al.1 rightly describe low enrolment as a principal problem related to the functioning of community health insurance (CHI) in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, they identify a set of important factors affecting the decision to enrol. Nonetheless, on reflection about the evidence established by this paper and related research, I would like to suggest some additional considerations. F...

From the introduction of Australia's national health insurance scheme (Medicare) in 1984 until recently, the proportion of the population covered by private health insurance declined steadily. Following an Industry Commission inquiry into the private health insurance industry in 1997, a number of policy changes were effected in an attempt to reverse this trend. The main policy changes were of t...

Community-based health insurance expansion has been proposed as a financing solution for the sizable informal sector in low-income settings. However, there is limited evidence of the administrative costs of such schemes. We assessed annual facility and district-level costs of running the Community Health Fund (CHF), a voluntary health insurance scheme for the informal sector in a rural and an u...

BACKGROUND Little research has focused on the relationship between health insurance and mental health in the community. The objective of this study is to determine how the basic health insurance system influences depression in Northwest China. METHODS Participants were selected from 32 communities in two northwestern Chinese cities through a three-stage random sampling. Three waves of intervi...

De Allegri et al.1 rightly describe low enrolment as a principal problem related to the functioning of community health insurance (CHI) in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, they identify a set of important factors affecting the decision to enrol. Nonetheless, on reflection about the evidence established by this paper and related research, I would like to suggest some additional considerations. F...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate alternative strategies for improving the uptake of benefits of a community based health insurance scheme by its poorest members. DESIGN Prospective cluster randomised controlled trial. SETTING Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) community based health insurance scheme in rural India. Participants 713 claimants at baseline (2003) and 1440 claimants two years later ...