Are Publicly Financed Health Insurance Schemes Working in India?

Our analysis shows that it is premature to dismiss the health insurance initiatives based on the existing analysis because these schemes perform better with time. This could be due to supply side factors such as improved implementation or demand side factors such as awareness of the scheme and financial literacy amongst users. To test this, we run the analysis by varying the definition of treatment group to only include districts that have schemes running for (a) at least a year and (b) longer than 2 years. The outcomes that we analyze are impoverishment, catastrophic healthcare expenditure and poverty gap change