When I was researching microinsurance and maternal mortality last year, I was struck by some of the observations that other researchers felt it necessary to include in their results. One of them was the finding that distance to a health center affects people’s access to care. In other news, water quenches thirst! I had to wonder if this was a relic of the general lack of forethought that must be put into procuring transport in the global North, where it’s more or less equally simple to reach a doctor one kilometer from one’s home as thirty kilometers. I otherwise fail to see how it’s notable that people who live farther from a clinic may use it less often.
This does highlight the fact that there are fundamental issues of healthcare access that aren’t purely microeconomic in nature. Distance is one, but the challenge of retaining skilled doctors in a low-wage environment is a second, and difficulties in obtaining and maintaining quality equipment and medication stocks (non-counterfeit medications!) are a third. The attitudes of healthcare workers also appeared extremely important to low-income patients, who seemed understandably sensitive about their social status, and hesitant to use centers where they would be treated disrespectfully because of their poverty.
The other thing I’ve been thinking of, however, was a little-discussed (at least in the papers that I read) corollary to the observations that microinsurance increases healthcare access, and health centers are favorably inclined towards patients who can actually pay for their care. My immediate concern upon reading these statements was, if access to microinsurance is still uneven, isn’t there a real possibility that patients who are even slightly better off will crowd out those who are too poor to afford $2-a-year insurance at all? If the resource base of health centers is fixed (and it may not be – I don’t have info on that), dramatic increases in patients covered by microinsurance could very well make the poorest of the poor even more vulnerable. I wonder how you’d best be able to test that. I imagine you’d have to look at the effects of a growing resource base (if the increased payments are used at the local level) or the improved quality of care referenced in the last post, and sort out what effects those have on the healthcare uptake rates of the poorest. Perhaps the question actually is, does extending microinsurance to some harm the uninsured by crowding them out, or does it improve their situation by letting them get a bit of a free ride on some improvements brought about by the insurance payments? Interesting.
keep up to date with approaching post. Thanks 1,000,000 and please ontinue the gratifying work.