Determining Health Insurance Attributes and Levels: A qualitative study

Health insurance is one of the financing mechanisms in the health sector that reduces expensive and unforeseen costs of the health care for households and converts these costs into predictable premiums. The purpose of this study was to identify the appropriate attributes and levels using the discrete choice experiments for health insurance, which can describe health care services appropriately.

The present study is the result of a qualitative phase of the simultaneous analysis that was conducted in 2017 in Yazd and included several stages. First, the literature was reviewed through a search on valid websites to identify the related features. Later, 8 health insurance and health policy makers, sampled by snowball method, were interviewed and specific health insurance weighting characteristics were assessed. Eventually, the research team decided to include the traits and levels in the final design after several panel meetings with the experts.

The findings of this study showed that the most important attributes of health insurance included: public hospitals, and private hospitals benefits, outpatient services, drug service coverage, dental insurance coverage, Para clinical services, medication and medical equipment cost coverage, and monthly premium.

Policymakers and health insurance organizations need to focus on health and premium benefit packages appropriate to people's ability to pay and community inflation to improve insurance coverage in this area. These attributes can help individuals to pay for health insurance and lead to changes in the insurance system of the country. They also enhance planning to improve basic insurance and increase the benefits of insurance packages.