Awareness and affordability of the newly proposed social health insurance among public servants in ARba Minch Town, SNNPR, Ethiopia/2019.

No Thumbnail Available

Date

2019-06

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Addis Abeba University

Abstract

Background: As part of the efforts being made to meet universal health coverage, Ethiopia plans to introduce social health insurance (SHI) scheme for the formal sector. Contribution will be collected as 3% of employee’s gross salary from both employee and employer, despite that the scheme is expected to enhance access to healthcare, there is a concern that the premium may not be affordable to majority of civil servants and there could be limited interest to join the scheme. Therefore, this study aims to assess awareness and affordability of the newly proposed social health insurance among public servants in Arba Minch town, South Ethiopia. Methods and material Cross-sectional study designed was used among randomly selected 713 public servant at Arba Minch town. The survey participates were selected based on multistage stratified random sampling method. Data was collected via structured questioner, then it was cleaned, coded, entered in to EPI data v.3.1 and exported to SPSS version 25 statistical package for analysis. Descriptive statistics used to summarize awareness and affordability of the scheme and both bivariate and multivariable logistic regression was used to examine factors driving the outcome variables. Odd and 95% CI was used to report the finding. Result The study revealed that half of the participants never heard of social health insurance. Working sector, regularly listening for health information through mass media and participation in social network are significantly positively associated with awareness of SHI. From the total survey participants, 607 (87.7%) respondents are able to afford the 3% of gross salary per month as scheme premium. Educational status, family size and net income were significantly explains affordability to the scheme. Among the total respondents, 254 (36.7%) are willing to join for the scheme and interest to join the scheme is affected by awareness of the scheme, household size, regularly listening for health information and participation in social network. Conclusion and recommendation The study revealed that affordability to health insurance would not be a serious challenge to introduced SHI for the formal sector. The major problems are found to be limited knowledge about the design of health issuance and willingness to participate in the scheme. Half of the respondents were never heard of social health insurance. Although more than three fourth were able to afford, majority were not willing to join the scheme. Therefore, it is better to work hard on public awareness of the scheme. The evidence from this research indicates that provision of health information on mass media could be used as one strategy to enhance understanding of health insurance and to change perception on SHI scheme.

Description

Keywords

Social health insurance

Citation

Collections