EPW: Evaluating Health Insurance Programmes – An Insurance Cascade Framework

Faculty member Dr. Sebastian Bauhoff published a piece recently in Economic and Political Weekly providing an insurance cascade as a framework to understand and assess bottlenecks in accessing public health insurance in India.

An array of bottlenecks has ensured that the numerous health insurance schemes introduced over the years have failed to make any significant dent on the health sector. This article tries to assess these problems by using the “insurance cascade,” a framework that traces the steps from enrolling eligible households to ultimately delivering their benefits. The existing evidence suggests substantial bottlenecks across all cascade steps, with especially large gaps in beneficiaries’ awareness of how to enrol in schemes, what the schemes covers, and how to access scheme benefits.

Resources

  • Bauhoff, S. & Sudharsanan, N. Evaluating Health Insurance Programmes. Economic and Political Weekly 56, 7–8 (2015), available here.