Abstract

Health insurance is expedient as it seeks to grant minimal economic security as well as increase access to priority health services for massive groups of

people, especially, those in the lower monetary classes. A cross sectional survey design was employed in this study, a total number of 335 respondents participated in this study. A structured and validated questionnaire with reliability 0.746 was used for data collection and thereafter administered to the participants through direct approach. Multi stage sampling technique method was adopted in administering 195 questionnaires on civil servants while purposive sampling was used to administer 140 questionnaires on artisans. The questionnaire was divided into seven (7) sections in order to get data on respondent’s demographic characteristics, awareness, attitude, perception, perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits and perceived barriers to health insurance. Research questions and hypotheses were formulated and tested. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics and correlation which were statistically tested at 0.05 level of significant using Pearson product moment analytical procedure. The  results revealed that the level of awareness, attitude, perception, perceived susceptibility due to non-usage, perceived benefits and barrier of the respondents had a mean score of 6.08(SD ± 3.02), 8.23(SD±3.69), 8.69(SD±3.83), 5.85 (SD± 3.25), 5.73(SD ±3.16), 6.56(±2.94) respectively. Only 57.6% (193) of the respondents reported to have awareness of health insurance scheme. About 20 (6.0%) people strongly agreed that health insurance was not important. 52 (15.5%) participants reported that they perceive those who do not enrol in the scheme may enjoy better health care than them. About two-third 217(64.8%) respondents had a low level of perception towards health insurance. Only 113 (33.7%) of the respondents believed that Kogi state health insurance scheme could offer cheap services. The study concluded that there is a low level of awareness regarding health insurance schemes among the civil servants and artisans in Kogi State. Therefore, regular seminars and trainings should be regularly conducted to disseminate information to civil servants, artisans and the general public on the benefits of health insurance scheme and also, eradicate misconceptions due to lack of adequate information.