Estimating the Willingness to Pay for Community-Based Health Insurance Schemes in Nigeria : A Random Valuation Framework

Community-based health insurance schemes attempt to bridge the gap between increasing health needs and scarce resources in poor communities as well as providing protection for the most vulnerable groups through cross-subsidization. However, these schemes are often initiated without strong empirical information that can help to benchmark cost-sharing potentials of households in the community. This study assesses the Willingness To Pay (WTP) of rural Nigerians for one aspect of the nation's new National Social Health Insurance Scheme initiated in 2004. As a case study, the Nsukka District of Enugu State, Southeastern Nigeria is used, where a rural community social health insurance scheme is being proposed by the local authorities. The results indicate that rural households in the area have WTP of about 181 Naira or $1.5 monthly as healthcare premium for this scheme. This amount was found to be positively and significantly correlated with household educational attainment, household wealth, household size and the level of trust households have in the management of the proposed scheme