Willingness to pay for the community based health insurance and its determinants among rural community of Arsi Negele district, Oromiya region, South East Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Community Based Health Insurance is a non-profit scheme organized in order to protect its members against catastrophic health expenses associated with illness and improve financial access to health care services. Currently the government of Ethiopia is piloting community based health insurance. Oromiya Regional State also expanded the scheme from 4 pilot districts to other 59 rural districts in 2013 as a second pilot. Objective: The study was designed to assess the willingness to pay for community based health insurance and its determinants among households in the rural community of Arsi Negelle, West Arsi Zone, Oromiya Regional State, South East Ethiopia, 2016. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in rural community of Arsi Negelle district. The study population was households that were not enrolled into the community based insurance scheme at the time of the study. Single population proportion formula was used to determine a sample size of 542.Pre-tested, semi structured interviewer administered questionnaire was used to collect the desired data. Double-Bounded Dichotomous Choice Variant of the contingent valuation method was used to assess the maximum willingness to pay for the scheme and logistic regression model was used to determine the effect of various factors on the willingness to pay.The collected data was cleaned, coded, entered into EPI-INFO version 7 software and transferred and analyzed using SPSS computer software package version 20. Result: Among 540 study participants, 464 expressed their willingness to join the schemes, from these 374(78.9%) was willingness to pay for CBHI scheme. The average amount of money they were willing to pay for the scheme was 233.28. Birr (11.10 USD) per household per year. Based on the logistic regression model, the odds of willingness to pay were significantly higher among those who attended at least primary education and those with higher income and elderly. Conclusion and recommendation: The willingness to pay for the community-based health insurance scheme in the study area was high. The scheme may need to give special considerations for the low income and uneducated households ......................................... Thesis available at ACIPH Library