Paper long abstract:

By the beginning of the 1990s, a negative appraisal of the health care system was shaped in Soviet society. Both citizens and healthcare providers were dissatisfied with the poor quality and efficiency of medical industry. These issues required fundamental changes in the health care financing system. Desire to expand sources of funding was the main factor of choosing insurance medicine as a direction for changing the healthcare financing system as insurance schemes have been shown to be powerful tools for securing the access to medical care by population and serving as a source of reliable income for health care providers. In this regard, the process of the transition to the compulsory health insurance model in Kazakhstan is not only relevant, but also has great social significance. Moreover, the willingness of population to support and accept the insurance program might help to accelerate the process of this transition. The development of measures to assess the readiness of the population to support insurance programs, the preparation of effective recommendations for governing bodies for policy in the health sector is an urgent task for any state.

The purpose of the research is to assess the possibilities of introducing additional drug insurance system in Kazakhstan. Based on the results of survey conducted across all regions in Kazakhstan in 2021, we propose a quantitative methodology for assessing the relationship between socio-economic status of the population and its willingness to support the drug insurance program. This drug insurance program would help reimbursing costs for the health care sector and prevents people from facing high drug costs.

Our results show that the socioeconomic status of an individual is a significant factor in Willingness to join (WTJ) the drug insurance program. We show that age, living standards, health self-assessment, medical expenses, and presence of chronic diseases play a vital role in the behavior of population towards the acceptance of the drug insurance program. If the patients’ charges are introduced, the lower paying capacity and willingness to pay of vulnerable groups should be addressed through well-developed exemption criteria and by linking co-payment rates to income.

This research has been/was/is funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. AP09259811)