Published Paper Details:

Background: Health Insurance is a rapidly emerging social security instrument for the rural poor. Chronic health problems, arising due to prevalence of inaccessibility to an affordable health care system is a major threat to their income earning capacity. Insurance is one of the risk management strategies. The need for an insurance system that works on the basic principle of pooling of risks of unexpected costs of persons falling ill and needing hospitalization by charging premium from a wider population base of the same community. There is a need to increase the awareness of health insurance among rural population therefore this study was undertaken. Objective: To study the socio economic and demographic profile of the study population and to analyze the awareness of health insurance of study population. Methods: A the sample of 385 respondents was selected from Madurai District using a stratified random sampling method. A standardized questionnaire based on a thorough literature review was used to analyze the data. The data was analyzed using statistical techniques. A demographic profile of the respondents, KMO and Bartlett's Test, and factor analysis were employed on the data using SPSS. Result: It shows that 61.8% of the respondents are male, which is the majority. 46.5% of the respondents fall within the 41-50 age bracket. Most respondents (60.5%) are married. 53.0% of respondents, or the majority. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy.761. Cronbach's alpha is.727. Conclusion: The determinants of awareness of health insurance were education and socioeconomic status. Though this study shows increased prevalence of awareness of health insurance there is still an alarming need to improve the awareness with regard to their knowledge about health insurance covering the medical expenses in the rural communities.