Extending Health Insurance: Effects of the National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana

Agar Brugiavini and Noemi Pace

No 2011/27, RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute

Abstract: There is considerable interest in exploring the potential of health insurance to increase the access to, and the affordability of, health care in Africa. We focus on the recent experience of Ghana, where a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) became law in 2003 and fully implemented from late 2005. Even though there is some evidence of large coverage levels, the effect of the NHIS on health care demand and out-of-pocket expenditures has still not been fully examined. This paper is an attempt to close this gap. Using nationally-representative household data from the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we find that the introduction of the NHIS has a positive and significant effect on the utilisation of health care services, although it does have only a weak effect on out-of-pocket expenditure.

Keywords: Health insurance; out-of-pocket expenses; maternity care demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-hea and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/17221/RSCAS_2011_27.pdf?sequence=1 Full text (application/pdf)

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:rsc:rsceui:2011/27

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute Convento, Via delle Fontanelle, 19, 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by RSCAS web unit ().