Health insurance for the poor in India

Community based health insurance (CBHI) is more suited than alternate arrangements to providing health insurance to the low-income people living in developing countries. The universal health insurance scheme, launched recently by the Prime Minister of India, is only one of the forms that CBHI can take. While analysing the proposed scheme, we examine alternate forms of CBHI schemes prevalent in the country.The development of private health insurance market in the country will not leave the poor unaffected. Insurance sector reform can affect the poor through its effect on the provision of health services (i.e., cost, quality and access) used by the low-income people as well as through its access to financing of health care. In this paper we also explore how insurance sector reforms alter health insurance prospects facing the poor in India, and what changes on the health front affecting the poor have happened or are likely to happen as a result of insurance sector reforms. We conclude that in diverse settings of India all forms of CBHI have a role to play and therefore need to be encouraged by the government through appropriate interventions. Formal insurance providers can also be reigned to serve low-in comepopulation. At the same time, developments in formal health insurance market need to be guided so as to minimise cost escalation of health care provisionHealth Insurance; Low-income people; poverty; risk and insurance; insurance schemes

Are the poor too poor to demand health insurance?

Community based micro insurance has aroused much interest and hope in meeting health care challenges facing the poor. In this paper we explore how institutional rigidities such as credit constraint impinge on demand for health insurance and how insurance could potentially prevent poor households from fallinginto poverty trap. In this setting, we argue that the appropriate public intervention in generating demand for insurance is not to subsidise premium but to remove these rigidities (easing credit constraint in the present context). Thus from insurance perspective as well, our analysis highlights the importance of having appropriate savings and borrowing instruments for the poor.Micro-insurance, Micro-credit, Credit Constraint, Demand for Insurance

Dynamic atmospheres and winds of cool luminous giants, I. Al2_2O3_3 and silicate dust in the close vicinity of M-type AGB stars

High spatial resolution techniques have given valuable insights into the mass loss mechanism of AGB stars, which presumably involves a combination of atmospheric levitation by pulsation-induced shock waves and radiation pressure on dust. Observations indicate that Al$_2$O$_3$ condenses at distances of about 2 stellar radii or less, prior to the formation of silicates. Al$_2$O$_3$ grains are therefore prime candidates for producing the scattered light observed in the close vicinity of several M-type AGB stars, and they may be seed particles for the condensation of silicates at lower temperatures. We have constructed a new generation of Dynamic Atmosphere & Radiation-driven Wind models based on Implicit Numerics (DARWIN), including a time-dependent treatment of grain growth & evaporation for both Al$_2$O$_3$ and Fe-free silicates (Mg$_2$SiO$_4$). The equations describing these dust species are solved in the framework of a frequency-dependent radiation-hydrodynamical model for the atmosphere & wind structure, taking pulsation-induced shock waves and periodic luminosity variations into account. Condensation of Al$_2$O$_3$ at the close distances and in the high concentrations implied by observations requires high transparency of the grains in the visual and near-IR region to avoid destruction by radiative heating. For solar abundances, radiation pressure due to Al$_2$O$_3$ is too low to drive a wind. Nevertheless, this dust species may have indirect effects on mass loss. The formation of composite grains with an Al$_2$O$_3$ core and a silicate mantle can give grain growth a head start, increasing both mass loss rates and wind velocities. Furthermore, our experimental core-mantle grain models lead to variations of visual and near-IR colors during a pulsation cycle which are in excellent agreement with observations.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (18 pages, 9 figures