Background Ethiopia plans to introduce social health insurance scheme for the formal sector. The scheme contribution will be collected as 3% of an employee’s monthly gross salary from both employee and employer. The scheme is expected to enhance access to health care, however, there is a concern that majority of civil servants were not willing to join and pay for it. Therefore, this study aims to assess willingness to join and pay for the newly proposed social health insurance among public servants in Arba Minch town, Southern Ethiopia.Methods Institution based, Cross-sectional study design was used among 713 randomly selected public servants in Arba Minch town. Multi-stage stratified random sampling technique was used to select participants. Data were collected by using a pre-tested, self-administered, structured questionnaire and then it was cleaned, coded, entered in to Epidata v.3.2 and exported to SPSS version 25 statistical package for analysis. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the predictors of willingness to join and pay for Social Health Insurance. Odds ratio less than 0.05 was used as cut-off point and 95% CI was used to report the finding. Open question contingent valuation method was also used to analyze willingness to pay for the scheme.Result Among the total of 692 respondents, 254 (36.7%) were willing to join the scheme. Out of those who were willing to join 171 (24.7%) respondents were willing to pay less than 1% and 41(5.9%) respondents were willing to pay 2–3% of their gross monthly salary. Interest to join the scheme was found to be affected by an awareness of the scheme, household size, regularly listening for health information and participation in the social network.Conclusion There is limited knowledge and awareness about the design of health issuance. Majority of the respondents were not willing to join and pay the proposed amount for the scheme. Provision of health information on mass media could be used as one strategy to enhance the understanding of health insurance and to change perception on social health insurance scheme.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.