The role of risk adjustment in the equitable financing of National Health Insurance in South Africa

Heather McLeod

Development Southern Africa, 2012, vol. 29, issue 5, 636-656

Abstract: A National Health Insurance system has been proposed for South Africa and two of the seven guiding principles are that there be social solidarity and equity. These will require both risk cross-subsidies and income cross-subsidies to be engineered into the health care financing system. This paper considers the need for risk adjustment at a provincial level using at least age, gender and HIV prevalence. The proposed single purchaser model with 52 purchasing districts is shown to be problematic. An alternative multiple purchaser model is proposed which includes existing health funds and employer-based health care arrangements. The role of risk adjustment is described at various levels of the system and it is demonstrated that equity and social solidarity can be achieved in a multiple purchaser system.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0376835X.2012.730963 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:deveza:v:29:y:2012:i:5:p:636-656

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CDSA20

DOI: 10.1080/0376835X.2012.730963

Access Statistics for this article

Development Southern Africa is currently edited by Marie Kirsten

More articles in Development Southern Africa from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().