Performance of national health insurance scheme: unleashing the journey so far for poor in Delhi

Across the world, there has been rapidly growing interest among the policy makers in unleashing the potential of the health insurance mechanism to increase the access to health care services and that too of better quality. It is especially true of developing economies which sees insurance as a tool to ensure better healthcare for all. This paper emphasizes on the recent experience of the beneficiaries in one of the districts of Delhi with the newly launched National Health Insurance Scheme. The literature does not talk about the determinants of enrollment with regard to this scheme; an attempt has been made in this paper to bridge this gap. We find that the introduction of the scheme has a positive effect on the utilization of the services but the scheme lacks emphasis on the quality. Despite being a carefully planned scheme with several unique features the scheme had very limited success in improving the economic welfare of the poor.