Scientific Publishing Financing Micro Health Insurance: Theory, Methods and Evidence (World Scientific Series in Health Investment and Financing): 2

Healthcare for all at affordable prices is still a major but universally elusive goal. Everyone spends money on healthcare, and it is the most impoverishing consumption item. Thus, most governments (and the United Nations) promote Universal Health Coverage each country's unique blend of tools for healthcare financing, including taxes, subsidies and market controls.Most people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have no health insurance of any kind. And most LMIC governments lack the political will, information, or resources to require their citizens to buy health insurance themselves or to subsidize insurance for all who cannot afford the price. This book deals with financing voluntary and contributory health insurance for resource-poor and rural groups in LMICs.This book addresses three issues. The first is how to catalyse demand for health insurance and develop insurance literacy among the largely illiterate and innumerate target population, using training programs to build an enabling consensus, allowing locals to create and administer such schemes. The second involves the process of developing simplified methods for risk assessment, which can help to underwrite risks, price the micro health insurance schemes, and ensure proper implementation. The third issue is formulating a compelling business case which would make this health insurance affordable, financially sustainable, and operationally scalable.This book develops insurance education and financial literacy for students of economics, business administration, insurance, development studies, and social work to prepare them for practical work as implementers, policymakers, or evaluators. A supplementary section for teachers and students includes comprehension questions. Review This book offers a rare analysis of how peripheral societies can develop health financing solutions locally through consensus, self-governance, and self-financing. In fact, it shows that promoting community ('micro') solutions can contribute to achieving the global aim of universal health coverage. Furthermore, the utilization of local information, local provision, local talent and local rules-in-use to devise local solutions, unlike top-down 'think globally' solutions, can set in motion a dynamic for devising local solutions. Considering that the Protection Gap is growing, this book invites all well-intentioned persons to pay more attention and direct more investments to 'act locally'. --Michael J Morrissey, President & Chief Executive Officer, International Insurance SocietyThe focus is on real-life questions. The reader meets men and women, communities, living conditions, calculations, hesitations, anxieties and projects driven by the rejection of fatalism. A whole section of vast uncovered areas of development macroeconomics as well as microeconomics of insurance, is being written ... Dr Dror s book constitutes a solid basis to raise some new questions, such as how big data can be employed better. What role should international organisations and the insurance industry play in providing technical assistance at the grassroots level? Or how to articulate microinsurance with a new class of securitized funds; Or, the portability of experiments across locations to succeed in applying the most appropriate models to different contexts. This book has the merit of motivating researchers to address these questions. --Asia Insurance ReviewThis book is an authentic treatise on applied economics. Theoretical or methodological issues treated are neither intangible nor speculative, but rational answers to identified problems … A remarkable feature of this book is the very extensive bibliography and literature reviews, which are a valuable aid to the researcher or expert who is interested in this topic. --Insurance and Risk Management