Implementing national health insurance in India: lessons for policymaking and practice in low-income countries

Journal article

While the drive for universal healthcare is high on the policy agenda of developing nations, the models and approaches vary. This study explores service-provider and user experiences of one such scheme - India’s recent national health insurance programme, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana-RSBY. It examines how the policy’s design affects healthcare delivery and service use. The findings show that despite improved hospital access for some, shortcomings in the RSBY resulted in perverse incentives for medical provision and large unmet healthcare needs amongst users. It suggests that a focus on hospital-based care and private provision will pose challenges to expanding healthcare access. Moreover, policy design exercises a powerful and steady influence over health care delivery processes and hence its conceptualisation and subsequent development needs to be evidence based.

Authors: Virk, A; Surender, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Science and Knowledge House
• Journal: British Journal of Health Informatics and Monitoring
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-19
• Publication date: 2016-03-31
• Acceptance date: 2015-11-24
• EISSN: 2057-0058
• Keywords: health policy; clinicians; implementation; developing countries; patients