Making choices between prepayment and user charges in Zambia. What are the results for equity?

Abstract

In many low-income countries, user charges were introduced in the 1990s. As problems emerged of equity of access, interest grew in developing prepayment mechanisms to protect users from risk of out-of-pocket payments. In Zambia, a prepayment scheme did not generate sufficient revenue, due to abuses of its terms. An alternative scheme using discount cards (a set of coupons to cover episodes of care at discount) was devised. We aimed to understand the equity implications of prepayment and discount cards relative to user charges. We proposed models predicting roles of income, perceived health status, perceived quality of care and time preference in choice of payment mechanism and use of health ..