Question

discuss some difference between having a publicly provided health insurance system (government provided system) and a privately provided insurance system.

Answer 1

The government can play an important role not only in providing the basic healthcare services but also by implementing government health insurance schemes. Private health insurance schemes are associated with high premium charges along with the costs of payments and co deductibles. Despite these high charges charged by the private insurance companies they do not cover all the out of pocket expenditures incurred by a patient. Therefore, the patients don’t even make health insurance claims since they will have to pay large copayments or deductibles for one time visit to the hospital. The poor people will not be able to afford these high charges and hence avoid buying these health insurance schemes. The payments for the government health insurance schemes would be made by the government on the behalf of its citizens and it will ensure universal health coverage. On the other hand, private health insurance schemes increases inequality in the healthcare system as those who would buy these schemes would have access to the best facilities whereas those without such schemes will have to resort to the cheapest facilities. However, people with government health insurance schemes will mostly be eligible to get treated at government hospitals only which might not be the best place to get treated given huge inefficiency and mismanagement that happens there but there is no such restriction on private health insurance schemes.