Home Employment Rank and the Choice of Health Insurance Benefit Scheme among Bangladeshi Civil Servants
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Employment Rank and the Choice of Health Insurance Benefit Scheme among Bangladeshi Civil Servants

  • Syed Abdul Hamid ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Afroza Begum , Syed M Ahsan , Sushil Ranjan Howlader , Azhar Uddin , Taslima Rahman and Md. Hafizur Rahman
Published/Copyright: May 20, 2021

Abstract

This study surveys 622 Bangladeshi civil servants of all administrative jurisdictions and elicits their preference for health insurance schemes. The latter vary in the amount of sum assured as well as in terms of premium sharing rules with the government. The paper also explores the financial burden that the premium subsidy may impose on the exchequer and the state’s fiscal capacity to shoulder it. We discover a very high willingness to join the scheme. Though all three premium-sharing options posit flat rates common for all employment ranks, respondents appear to prefer premiums proportional to their basic salary.

JEL Classification Code: H41; H51; I11; I13; I18

Corresponding author: Syed Abdul Hamid, Professor, Institute of Health Economics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh, E-mail:

Funding source: Health Economics Unit, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

Acknowledgements

The authors express their sincere gratitude to Health Economics Unit (HEU), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Bangladesh, for funding this study. The authors are also grateful to Mr. Ashadul Islam, former Director General, HEU, for excellent research support. The authors offer their sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewer for her/his valuable comments and suggestions. All opinions, judgments and policy inferences implied in the document are however the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agency.

  1. Research funding: This work was funded by Health Economics Unit (HEU), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Bangladesh.

  2. Conflict of interest statement: We, the authors, declare that we have no conflict of interest.

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Received: 2019-06-26
Revised: 2021-04-05
Accepted: 2021-05-01
Published Online: 2021-05-20

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