Kathmandu: The Government’s flagship social security program, Health Insurance Program, couldn’t be successful to maximize the benefit to a larger part of the nation. After six years of the implementation of the program, still above 81 percent of the total population is out of reach of health insurance program.
According to the report published on the dash board of the Health Insurance Board(HIB), merely 18.61 percent of the total population has been enrolled till date. According to the data, 56,021,036 people from 1,731,839 households have only been included in the HIP which accounts only 18.60 percent of the total population.
The poor delivery of health services and lack of availability of medicine results poor enrollment in the flagship program.
According to HIB, about 12.47 billion insurance premium has been collected under the program where province 1 is the largest contributor. It contributes around 30.16 percent of the total premium income. Province 1 is followed by Bagmati Province which contributes 18.44 percent of the total premium or Rs 2.29 billion.
Madhes Province which has easily access to health facilities contributes only 6.79 per cent. The lowest premium has been collected from Kanali Province which accounts 4.65 percent to the total premium collection.
The government has allocated a total of Rs. 20.59 billion in the seven fiscal years of the program while Rs. 7.5 billion has been allocated for upcoming Fiscal Year 2079/80.
