Premium
Effect of the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme on exit time from catastrophic healthcare expenditure
Author(s) -
Frimpong Albert Opoku,
Amporfu Eugenia,
Arthur Eric
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
african development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.654
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-8268
pISSN - 1017-6772
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8268.12585
Subject(s) - poverty , health care , national health insurance , payment , national health interview survey , business , economics , environmental health , socioeconomics , economic growth , medicine , finance , population
Catastrophic healthcare expenditure (CHE) can plunge households into poverty. Faced with CHE, the question that becomes relevant is how long it will take the household to exit CHE. This paper examines the effect of the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) on exit time from CHE. The paper uses the Cox proportional hazard model for the analysis, with data sourced from round six of the Ghana Living Standard Survey and World Development Indicators. The results show that households that spend 40% (20%) of their non‐food incomes on healthcare, on average, exit CHE after 10 months and 4 days (13 months and 24 days) being in CHE and those with NHIS coverage exit CHE 19 days (30 days) earlier than those without NHIS coverage. Policy implications arising from this paper include the need to expand NHIS enrolment to mitigate impoverishment due to out‐of‐pocket healthcare payments. Households with higher risks of severe CHE and longer exit time from CHE should be identified and provided with comprehensive NHIS coverage than those with lower risks.