Awareness on Health Insurance among a selected Urban Population in Puducherry

Abstract

Background: Every year, OOP spending pushes 3.5% to 6.2% of the India’s population below poverty line. So there is a need to determine whether this is due to lack of awareness on part of the public. Objectives: To assess the awareness about health insurance among a selected urban population of   Puducherry and to explore the individual preferences regarding health insurance and their utilization pattern. Methodology: A Cross Sectional Study was conducted in urban field practicing area of institution. The houses were chosen by Systemic Random Sampling technique. The sample size was 234. The study was carried out for a period of 3 months. A semi-structured, pretested questionnaire was used as data collection tool. Results: The mean age of the participants was 43.9 ± 13.87 years with majority being in the age group of 20 - 40 years (50.4%). About53.8% were aware about the health insurance whereas their willingness to obtain Health insurance accounts only for 28.6%.  There was a significant association (p<0.05) between the level of education, family type and awareness of the participants and between willingness and socio economic status. 95.5% of the participants have a desire to enrol in government schemes. Nearly half of them (56.7%) wanted to pay yearly. 41.8% of the participants are willing to purchase individual health insurance policy. Conclusion: Even though half of the respondents are aware of health insurance, they are not utilizing the same. Media seemed to have played an important role in dissemination of information. There was a significant association between type of Family, Educational status and awareness about Health Insurance. Also, the expense spend by participants who are having HI is also significantly less than the participant without HI. Hence there is need to launch information, education and communication activities in order to make aware of various Government and Private HI schemes.