Bridging the Healthcare Protection Gap: Evaluating Awareness and Accessibility of Health Micro-Insurance among BPL Card Holders

Health Micro-Insurance, BPL Card Holders, Awareness, Accessibility, Healthcare Utilization, Financial Protection, Universal Health Coverage, India.

Health micro-insurance can make a major contribution to enhance access to health care and provide financial protection to the economically disadvantaged. The assessment of awareness and access to health micro-insurance products from the BPL card holders and their impact on utilisation and financial protection is detailed in this study. The research method used was quantitative, descriptive and cross sectional conducted using 400 respondents. The results show moderate levels of awareness and accessibility, which both have a moderate impact on enrolment, healthcare utilization, and financial protection (FP). The study suggests that strengthening up community-level awareness programmes, making the enrolment process easier and creating more institutional support could help increase the insurance coverage and have greater equity in accessing health services by disadvantaged households.