Managing your healthcare finances adequately is of utmost importance. We all get sick at one time or another, or our family members do, yet many people do not have access to healthcare financing services. Having the right information regarding the available services and resources can be a matter of life and death.
“An individual should be able to meet the cost of their preventive and curative health services from time to time, and also costs emerging from emergency and urgent health needs, ” Says Dr. Thomas Kirengo, 28, a medical practitioner based in Embu Level V Hospital, Kenya.
“For most people in Kenya, they pay for their health costs as an emergency, it is not planned, so they usually use their savings, do fund-raising meetings or end up not able to cater for the costs at all.” He says, “Therefore being aware of health financing allows one to better plan, for these situations which will definitely happens in anybody’s life.”
Other advantage of having a health scheme is that it allows one to have a “peace of mind” of himself and his family. “If one is a bread winner and sustains a road traffic accident, and one is admitted to hospital for 3 months, it helps being sure of how one’s family is surviving and how one is going to foot hospital bills. It also gives one financial security since one’s savings will not be depleted,” He says.
There are various factors to consider when one is choosing a health financing scheme which depends on individual needs. “Individuals have to look at whether where one is employed covers their health financing. Many people who are employed by the government or other companies have a health financing scheme which covers their hospital bills hence are not stressed by health financing. However one still has to consider the healthcare needs of the people they live with, be it their spouse, children, parents, grandparents or other dependants and have to plan for it.”
“Many health insurances require one to pay as a lump sum which may not be affordable to a lot of people. However, there are other services available which allow one to save little amounts at a time. Still the worst option is where some people do not plan and nor save and wait for a need to arise and figure out how to raise the funds.”
One of the main challenges that face healthcare financing is lack of awareness especially in young population regarding available services. “Many people do not perceive that they will need to go to the hospital,” He says. “We did a study to look into health financing in patients admitted in the surgical wards of our hospital and how they were able to meet their health costs, what we found was that most people admitted were likely to be male and younger than 40 years and had sustained trauma from road traffic accidents. Many people did not have a health financing scheme and ended paying from their pockets.”
Still there are many people who do not have sources of revenue yet they are at risk of getting sick. Dr Kirengo advises that the local governments need to have schemes to help their vulnerable groups cater for their healthcare. “There are certain groups that do not have any development or source of income but have an increased risk of going to hospital. Yet in the end, when they go to hospital the county governments end up paying their bills in form of waiver. If the governments set up schemes for such groups, it ends up being much cheaper for the local governments.”
“The governments in other countries have some kind of social welfare program that allows everyone to receive health services yet those services are available in Kenya for only the elderly population making a huge part of the youthful population vulnerable,” He says. “Innovations are still playing a big role in increasing accessibility of health financing services hence the future is bright.”