Abstract
Determining the health insurance premium is the most important aspect in providing social health insurance. In measuring the rate, it is needed to calculate the cost of providing the service. One possible methodological tool of calculating the cost is the contingent valuation method for the evaluation of the consumers’ capacity and their willingness to pay for the services. This study applied a Logit model, having binary depended variable with follow up dichotomous choice at different premium levels, to estimate the factors associated to joining the social health insurance scheme. The study found that 80.1 percent of the government employees of Bangladesh wants to pay on average 6.69 percent of their basic salary as social health insurance premium. The result shows that younger peoples are less willing to pay while older people are more willing to pay for social health insurance. The study also revealed that the area of residence and no of visit to doctor play a key role in determining the willingness to pay. This study should help the policymakers to formulate and implement the social health insurance scheme in Bangladesh.
Highlights
Changing the dimension of budgetary resources and the political environment ensures government policy reforms
One of the well-known stated preferences method is contingent valuation (CV), in which respondents are asked to reveal their willingness to pay for a given good or service after describing what is on offer (Nosratnejad et al, 2016)
19.9 percent of the respondents did not agree to pay, whereas 80.1 percent agreed to pay health insurance premium. The reasons behind this opinion is that 88.4 percent people think that social health insurance is required for improving local health standard and 60.6 percent respondents understands that government‟s medical allowances are not sufficient
Summary
Changing the dimension of budgetary resources and the political environment ensures government policy reforms. As the medical costs are increasing rapidly, to bear the increasing medical cost, there is a need for alternatives such as health insurance It will reduce the burden of both the government and the patients by shifting the pressure from health care system of a country. Willingness to pay methods are commonly used where the pricing or the valuation of the services is very easy and straight forward. The contingent valuation method is such kind of method in which individuals determine their willingness by comparing different hypothetical situations (Ryan et al, 2001) Such kind of application in WTP studies can be seen in certain health care fields (Ryan et al, 2001). It is possible to use the method for pricing in any health studies
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