An Evaluation of Micro Health Insurance Schemes in India

Health is featuring everywhere in development discourse right from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Gramsabhas. Health is increasingly being seen as a development issue, rather than just a medical one. Apart from natural sciences, by now health has emerged as a major area of academic interest in social sciences. Burden of health care expenditure in general and hospitalization in particular can be catastrophic on poor households. When any working person from poor household faces hospitalization, the family loses his income as an opportunity cost and moreover they have to manage the money for hospitalization. According to World Bank estimates (World Bank 2001), more than 40 per cent of hospitalized Indians borrow money or sell assets to cover the cost and more then 30 per cent of hospitalized Indians fall below the poverty line as a result of out-of-pocket hospital expenditure. State as well as Market has failed to provide financial risk protection to poor from this expenditure. Interestingly, some NGOs in India have designed Micro Health Insurance (MHI) schemes for poor households and SEWA is running one of the largest MHI schemes since 1992.