Independent Research and Policy Advocacy

The Problem with Hospicash

How can we provide meaningful financial protection to people who are currently not served by health insurance markets (public or private)? This is the issue Bindu and her team at Dvara Health Finance have been working on for the past couple of years.

Can Leveraging Social Capital Enhance Consumers’ Experience with Health Insurance?

When viewed from a consumer’s perspective, these challenges manifest at different stages of their journey with a health insurance program, beginning from the decision to enrol in a program and ending at the renewal stage. While tweaks to the design of the health insurance program or moving to a more integrated model of healthcare provision may help in this blog post, we explore the role that social capital can play in circumventing some of these challenges.

Is contributory health insurance indeed an addiction to a bad idea? A comment on its relevance for low- and middle-income countries

Financing of health systems is an enduring concern world wide. Yazbeck and colleagues in their paper make an important point that when there is a choice between financing in which contributions from citizens take place in the form of generalised taxes versus those in which they are in the form of insurance premiums, the overwhelming evidence suggests that tax-based financing is unambiguously superior even in low- and middle-income countries. Despite the strength of their case against contributory insurance, we suggest that the path forward may be more complex than they envisage for a number of reasons.

Health Insurance Ownership in India

In this study, we conduct a quantitative analysis of household finance data to understand the status of health insurance ownership in India, identify the determinants of health insurance ownership, and understand the relationship between households’ access to health insurance and their health expenditure.

Political Economy of Health: Tamil Nadu

India’s healthcare sector has made significant strides in the last couple of decades. Yet, progress in terms of access, affordability, and quality of healthcare remains variable across states.  There are many factors that affect the status of health in a national/sub-national geography, with the political economy of healthcare being a key driver of health outcomes. […]

Demand for Health Insurance

Based on a study of the theoretical and empirical literature, we conclude with a set of hypotheses that looks at how demand for health insurance can be fostered by targeting both the components of demand (intention and action), through well-designed awareness measures and nudges to overcome the various behavioural biases involved.