ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the perspectives for an adapted application of the social health insurance concept in low-income developing countries. It explores how government and non-government institutions could co-operate in order to attain the objective of full population coverage. The chapter discusses the concept of social health insurance, implementation issues and the possibility of involving nonprofit health insurance organizations which may operate at the level of enterprises, trade unions or communities. It reviews the pros and cons of these organizations and focus thereby on selected schemes in Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. The chapter also discusses proposals for new roles of the nonprofit health insurance organizations and government. It presents the experiences of selected nonprofit health insurance schemes in Africa and Asia. The community's contributions would usually complement those from bilateral development partners and non-government organizations. Implementation of a social health insurance policy will be prohibited or severely delayed if there is no strong and steady political support.
