Mutual Health Insurance Schemes with the context of the National Health Insurance Act: a study of selected schemes in the Eastern Region of Ghana
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Date
2004-11-24
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Abstract
The issue of health insurance in Ghana has raised a lot of concern among the general populace. Before the passage of the National Health Insurance Act (Act 650) in August 2003, a number of mutual health insurance schemes were already in existence in the country. Some of these schemes had already taken off whiles others were still at the preparatory stage. This study examines the sustainability of the already existing schemes given the provision in the National Health Insurance Act. The study presents an examination of the operations of two mutual health insurance schemes in Koforidua to determine the sustainability of the schemes within the Act. The two schemes studied were the Mile 50 Presbyterian Church Mutual Health Organisation and the Pope John Secondary School and Junior Seminary Health Insurance
Data from both secondary and primary sources were used. Secondary data were collected through library research and the primary data through personal interviews with scheme managers, beneficiaries of scheme and healthcare providers. Two different sampling methods were used in selecting the interviewees from the two schemes. Stratified sampling and the proportional approach were applied in selecting members from the Mile 50 Presbyterian Mutual Health Insurance Scheme whiles the random sampling was used in the Pope John Health Insurance Scheme.
Analysis of the data revealed that generally awareness of the National Health Insurance Act and the District-wide Health Schemes was high except that the content of the Act was not very much known. With the Church Scheme (Mile 50 Presbyterian Mutual Health Organisation) 36 percent of the members were willing to join the District-wide scheme, 36 percent prefers the current scheme (Mile 50), 16 percent prefers both schemes and 12 percent of the members were not decided about the choice of scheme either because they were not aware of District —wide schemes or they were not aware of the benefit package.
With the school scheme (Pope John Health Insurance Scheme) majority (60 percent) of the students could not decide on the choice of scheme because of lack of knowledge
Description
A Thesis submitted to the Board of Postgraduate Studies
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in
Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Science in Development
Policy and Planning, 2004