Review Article
Year: 2018 | Month: February | Volume: 8 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 249-257
Impact of Out-Of-Pocket Health Care Financing and Health Insurance Utilization among the Population: A Systematic Review
Nagaraj Shet1, Ghulam Jeelani Qadiri2, Bhuvanesh Sukhlal Kalal3, Sunita saldanha4
1Assistant Officer Operations, 2Professor, 4Associate Professor,Department of Hospital Administration, Yenepoya Medical College Hospital, Deralakatte, Mangaluru-575018, Karnataka, India.
3Senior Research Fellow (CSIR), Department of Biochemistry, Yenepoya Medical College; and Yenepoya Research Centre, Yenepoya University, Deralakatte, Mangaluru-575018, Karnataka, India.
Corresponding Author: Nagaraj Shet
ABSTRACT
The enactment of the insurance regulatory and development act (IRDA) in 1999 allows private and foreign entrepreneurs to enter the health insurance market and at present Indian health insurance sector offers different kind of health insurances like social health insurance, private health insurance and community based health insurance etc. But even with this as depicted by many studies penetration of insurance especially at rural India is very low and people are paying their heath care cost though pocket.
To understand this issue, present article tries to provides detailed review on Out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure and their impact on the households, awareness and attitude regarding health insurance in population. Using CINHAL, EBSCO Host and Medline databases the search was conducted for a period of 4 months from February 2015 to May 2015. Most of the studies reported the OOP payments on hose holds and role of health insurance on financial protection, health service utilization but less often on quality of care, same time demonstrates lower level of awareness regarding health insurance in rural population.
Review findings supports the view of entities like WHO that prepaid health financing mechanisms are important alternative for OOP payment methods and which are capable to rule out the negative effects of direst OOP payments and also helps to providing universal health coverage.
Key words: health care expenditure; Social health insurance; Out-of-pocket payment; India