INTERPRETATION Increased health insurance coverage generally appears to increase access to health care facilities , improve financial protection and improve health status , although findings are not totally consistent .
BACKGROUND Exp and ing public health insurance seeks to attain several desirable objectives , including increasing access to healthcare services , reducing the risk of catastrophic healthcare expenditures , and improving health outcomes .
The extent to which these objectives are met in a real-world policy context remains an empirical question of increasing research and policy interest in recent years .
Health insurance and health-seeking behavior: evidence from a randomized community-based insurance rollout in rural Burkina Faso.
In 2004 , a community-based health insurance ( CBI ) scheme was introduced in Nouna district , Burkina Faso , with the primary objective of improving access to facility-based health services . In order to overcome self- selection issues in the analysis of the behavioral effects of insurance , we combine four waves of the Nouna Health District Household Survey into a panel data set , and use the r and omized timing of insurance rollout to estimate the causal effect of insurance coverage on health-seeking behavior . While we find a generally positive association between CBI affiliation and treatment seeking , we can not reject the null that the introduction of health insurance does not have any effect on treatment seeking in general , and utilization of facility-based professional care , in particular . Low levels of health care provider satisfaction , poor perceived quality of care by enrollees , and ambiguity in the coverage level of the CBI benefit package appear to have contributed to these weak results . Our findings imply that the basic notion of insurance mechanically increasing facility-based professional care is not necessarily true empirically , and likely contingent on a large number of context ual factors affecting health-seeking behavior within households and communities
INTERPRETATION Increased health insurance coverage generally appears to increase access to health care facilities , improve financial protection and improve health status , although findings are not totally consistent .
BACKGROUND Exp and ing public health insurance seeks to attain several desirable objectives , including increasing access to healthcare services , reducing the risk of catastrophic healthcare expenditures , and improving health outcomes .
The extent to which these objectives are met in a real-world policy context remains an empirical question of increasing research and policy interest in recent years .