Family planning and health insurance in developing countries

The study finds that, unfortunately, most insurance providers are reluctant to add benefits that are not accident- or illness-related to their indemnity plans -- the most common plans in developing countries. Adding family planning benefits does not produce significant cost savings for most providers because they rarely provide maternity benefits. Furthermore, the beneficiaries of such policies, who are in the highest income and educational groups, are most likely to already use family planning and to buy their services from the private sector. Therefore, efforts to expand the private provision of family planning through insurance initiatives should be focused on integrating family planning benefits into managed care plans. These plans already cover a range of preventive services, and they have more control over the extent to which the insured utilize covered benefits. Efforts to include family planning in managed care programs are particularly appropriate in areas such as in Asia, where contraceptive prevalence is reasonably high but where family planning users depend largely on public sector providers. (Author abstract, modified)