The effect of a social health insurance on health services utilization and on the total potential incidence of catastrophic health expenditure is explored in this paper. Most previous measures of the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure are quite constrained since they do not take into...

This paper summarizes the results of three individual research projects (Asfaw, 2005; Lamiraud et al., 2005; Xu et al., 2005) measuring the impact of membership in a health insurance scheme in three African countries, namely Kenya, Senegal and South Africa. It is structured as follows. The first section...

This paper addresses the issue of the feasibility of 'social' health insurance (SHI) in developing countries. SHI aims at protecting all population groups against financial risks due to illness. There are substantial difficulties in implementation, however, due to lack of debate and consensus...

Several low- and middle-income countries are interested in extending their existing health insurance for specific groups to eventually cover their entire populations. For those countries interested in such an extension, it is important to understand the factors that affect the transition from...

Most community financing schemes have evolved in the context of severe economic constraints, political instability, and lack of good governance. Usually government taxation capacity is weak, formal mechanisms of social protection for vulnerable populations absent, and government oversight of the...