Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Aug 11:15:318.
doi: 10.1186/s12913-015-0988-8.

Knowledge of and preferences for health insurance among formal sector employees in Addis Ababa: a qualitative study

Amarech Obse  1 , Damen Hailemariam  2 , Charles Normand  3
Affiliations

Knowledge of and preferences for health insurance among formal sector employees in Addis Ababa: a qualitative study

Amarech Obse et al. BMC Health Serv Res. .

Abstract

Background: The Ethiopian health system has been undergoing through reforms. One of the reforms stipulated in policy documents is the introduction of health insurance at national level. Having the majority of the population without any experience of health insurance, investigating preferences and knowledge of the essence of health insurance among potential enrolees will provide vital information for policy makers. This formative study seeks to explore the knowledge and the preference for health insurance among formal sector employees in Addis Ababa.

Methods: Six focus group discussions with formal sector employees and five key informant interviews were conducted in Addis Ababa. A thematic analysis is used to analyse the results.

Results: The findings suggest that there is little knowledge about the concept and elements of health insurance. Some concepts such as, risk pooling and sharing are not well understood. The participants of the study considered health insurance as only a prepayment mechanism without risk sharing among members of the scheme. Regarding preference for health insurance, they have revealed quality of care as the most important factor. Comprehensiveness of benefit packages and the amount of premium level are also found to be concerns related to health insurance. However, a trade-off is also observed among premium level, comprehensive benefit packages, and healthcare facilities.

Conclusions: Improvements on availability and quality of services need to precede the introduction of social health insurance. There is also a need to work on awareness creation regarding concepts of health insurance. Further studies may explore if the knowledge gap is real or appeared due to reservations of the participants on the introduction of health insurance.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. De-Allegri M, Sanon M, Sauerborn R. “To enrol or not to enrol?”: a qualitative investigation of demand for health insurance in rural West Africa. Soc Sci Med. 2006;62:1520–1527. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.07.036. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Criel B, Waelkens MP. Declining subscriptions to the Maliando Mutual Health Organization in Guinea-Conakry (West Africa): what is going wrong? Soc Sci Med. 2003;57:1250–1219. doi: 10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00495-1. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Harries KM, Keane MP. A model of health plan choice: inferring preferences and perceptions from a combination of revealed preference and attitudinal data. J Econometrics. 1999;89:131–157. doi: 10.1016/S0304-4076(98)00058-X. - DOI
    1. Basaza R, Criel B, Van der Stuyft P. Community health insurance in Uganda: why does enrolment remain low? a view from beneath. Health Policy. 2008;87:172–184. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2007.12.008. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Monheit A, Vistnes J. Health insurance enrollment decisions: preferences for coverage, worker sorting and insurance take-up. Inquiry. 2008;45(Summer):153–167. - PubMed

Publication types