A Dirt-Poor Nation, With a Health Plan

[groovedaddy]

The little prince is the first in his line to be delivered in a clinic rather than on the floor of a mud hut. But he is not the first with health insurance. Both his mother and grandmother have it, which is why he was born here.

Rwanda has had national health insurance for 11 years now; 92 percent of the nation is covered, and the premiums are $2 a year.

Sunny Ntayomba, an editorial writer for The New Times, a newspaper based in the capital, Kigali, is aware of the paradox: his nation, one of the world’s poorest, insures more of its citizens than the world’s richest does.

He met an American college student passing through last year, and found it “absurd, ridiculous, that I have health insurance and she didn’t,” he said, adding: “And if she got sick, her parents might go bankrupt. The saddest thing was the way she shrugged her shoulders and just hoped not to fall sick.”

For $2 a year, of course, Rwanda’s coverage is no fancier than the Mayange maternity ward.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/health/policy/15rwanda.html?th&emc=th

[jody]

1. Rwanda has 1 physician and 4 nurses per 10,000 to serve its 10 million people. n/t

[stray cat]

2. How many here would be satisfied with national health care

that covered diarrhea, deliveries and tuberculis and cuts? And still included copays and subsidies from outside the country including Partners in Health. However, its a great step forward for Rwanda to care about its citizens with the limited resources it has.