The potential of value-added services in health microinsurance

01.03.2014
Value-added services (VAS), bundled with health microinsurance (HMI) products that often cover only hospital events, show promise to enhance value for clients and improve viability of HMI schemes. VAS are healthcare services that offer clients a way to improve access to and reduce out-of-pocket expenditure for frequently occurring outpatient services which over time can be financially devastating to a low-income family. For insurers, VAS can stimulate demand by making HMI more tangible. In addition, VAS providing illness prevention and outpatient treatment may help reduce the cost of claims, while encouraging better health-seeking behaviour. Presently, there are limited data to quantify the possible benefits of VAS to clients and to HMI practitioners and even the scale at which various VAS operate. More VAS interventions should be launched in the next two years, in more developing countries, with additional research to fill gaps in knowledge. In the interim, emerging findings on broad measures often used to assess the effectiveness of healthcare financing or delivery, such as child and maternal mortality, provide initial indicators of impact. VAS, further enabled by technology, promise to be part of a multifaceted solution for HMI to become a more valued and viable mechanism to protect the health (and wealth) of the poor.