Evaluation of the Public Health Financing and National Health Insurance Scheme Policy in Nigeria

The inevitability of good healthcare system in national development depends on every government’s commitment in ensuring proper healthcare services to its populace. However, extant literature have focused on the effects of health care system financing without factoring the significance of its insurance scheme components. This study therefore evaluated the effect of public health financing on national health insurance scheme (NHIS) policy in Nigeria. Multistage (clustered and incident) sampling technique was employed to select the sample size of 399 individuals from a population of 113,853 residents of Ogbomoso North Local Government area. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaire which was administered on sampled respondents. Variables included income, education, settlement of patients’ bills, patient patronage, occupation, religion, and years of registration. Chi-square was used to assess the significance of public health financing on NHIS. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the effect of socio-cultural characteristics on NHIS adoption. The results showed that NHIS don’t settle their patients’ bill on time (42.9%). Also, patients’ patronage was low (10%) in most of NHIS accredited hospitals (57.1%). The analysis showed that public health financing had effect on NHIS (χ² =14.000; p = 0.007). It was also revealed that socio-cultural characteristics such as education, income and sex had significant effect on NHIS adoption (R² = 0.624, F-ratio =15.344; p = 0.001). This study concluded that public health financing had effect on NHIS and that adoption of NHIS hinged on the socio-cultural characteristics. This study recommended that government should increase the awareness of NHIS so that larger population can benefit from it. Also, NHIS should ensure prompt payment of NHIS patients’ medical bills to encourage health facilities providers