Health Security Across the Spectrum: Exploring the Impact of Socioeconomic Factors on Health Insurance Uptake in India

Abstract

ABSTRACTTo ensure that healthcare services are accessible, health insurance is receiving increased amounts of attention in debates among health experts. The current disease pattern has forced people to rely on intensive care, which has increased both the cost of treatment and the frequency of accessing healthcare facilities. This paper has focused on various socioeconomic and demographic determinants of choice that are important for ensuring the use of various types of health insurance schemes or programs among the older population in India. Using the Longitudinal Survey of Aging in India (LASI) Wave-1 2020 data, the total sample used for this study included 66,658 elderly individuals aged 45 years and older. Both binary association and multinomial logistic regression were employed to examine the associations of all the socioeconomic and demographic determinants with people having and not having access to different health insurance. The findings showed that there is a greater incidence of government health insurance than of community, employer, or private health insurance among people in all categories based on demographic, geographical, economic distribution, and health status, with chronic diseases showing some impact on people choosing to be insured. This study recommends that policy actions be taken to make the health insurance market transparent and reduce the chances of failure.Contributions to the literatureThe current epidemiological transition, along with the prospective demographic transition of more people in later stages of life that India is currently facing and will experience in the coming decades, has raised severe concerns about the accessibility of healthcare services.Knowing the factors and reasons for choosing certain health insurance schemes is highly important for tracing the actual lags in the Indian health insurance market and will help policymakers formulate health insurance policies.The need to make the Indian health insurance market transparent.reducing the chances of failure of health insurance schemes