Social Health Insurance Schemes

Abstract

Health crises plague most economies irrespective of their average per capita income levels, and this is largely due to chronic and repeated illnesses. Contextualizing this paradigm in India, the India Public Finance and Policy Report: Health Matters is an attempt to discuss some of the most crucial issues faced by Indian health sectors and to examine alternatives for policymakers to provide affordable, reliable, and effective health care facilities to the people. This report compares three government-run social health insurance schemes-the Swasthya Sathi Scheme, the Aarogyasari Community Insurance Scheme, and a community-based health insurance scheme-to examine their effectiveness in reducing household's vulnerability to health shocks. Additionally, it brings to light the manipulation of health package deals by private hospitals to increase the amount patients spend on them. The report also estimates the inefficiencies across states and districts of India with regard to health care personnel and infrastructure. Moreover, the editors have put together a series of interviews with different stakeholders associated with the health care system, such as doctors, nurses, patients, and medical representatives, who discuss the problems that perturb this sector. Written in a lucid and non-technical language, this is a deeply researched theoretical and empirical commentary about health care and public polices in India.