Devadasan N, Ranson K, Van Damme W, Acharya A, Criel B. The landscape of community health insurance in India: An overview based on 10 case studies. Health Policy 2006; 78:224-34
Community health insurance is an important intermediate step in the evolution of an equitable health financing mechanism such as social health insurance in Europe and Japan.
Social health insurance in these countries, in fact, evolved from a conglomeration of small ‘community’ health insurance schemes. Historically, during the peak of the industrial revolution workers’ unions developed insurance mechanisms which were eventually transformed. Community health insurance programmes in India offer valuable lessons for policy-makers. Documented here are 12 schemes where health insurance has been operationalised. The two following articles describe in some detail two successful community health projects.
Often we forget that we live in an increasingly inequitable society
