Health Economics: Private Insurance in Middle-Income Countries

This project reflection analyzes a student's experience researching private insurance within the context of health economics, specifically focusing on middle-income countries. The project involved a team of four students, each assigned specific roles to gather information from various sources including literature reviews, online databases, and a local private insurance company. The reflection highlights the student's initial lack of knowledge about insurance and their subsequent learning about different insurance types, services, and their effects on healthcare in these countries. The project's findings indicate that private insurance can improve healthcare affordability, drawing examples from the United States and India. The reflection emphasizes the importance of teamwork in the project's success, the collaboration among team members, and the effective distribution of tasks. The student gained valuable insights into the advantages of teamwork and its significance in achieving project goals. The bibliography includes key sources used for the project.

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Project Reflection
By (Name)
Course
Instructor
Institution
City and state
Date

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During the end of the year semester, our tutor assigned us to research a project Private Insurance
to Middle-Income Countries. Being in a health economic unit, the project was essential for a
better understanding of how developing countries especially middle-income countries are
managing the health of their citizens, methods deployed and health care resource allocation
depending on the needs of the people. For our project, we would major in private insurance
companies. At the beginning of the project, I had little idea about insurance though I had come
across that name in my previous unit. All that I knew about insurance were certain terms used
such as transfer of risk, premium payment, and risk assessment. However, concerning the topic
of economic analysis in health care, I certainly thought the research is on how Private insurance
companies support or affect health services in middle-income countries. My expectation of the
project was that I would understand more about insurance, the types of insurance, the services
they provide and how they affect health services in middle-income countries.
For our project, we were in a group of four, Ameena, Arun, Fatemeh and me. Each member
had a defined role in the group. Ameena being our team leader, ensuring that each person
performed the assigned role efficiently without failing. Each member had to participate in the
project (Segers, et al 2017 p. 215) The main role of the team members was to collect information
on insurance companies and record information for discussion after evening classes or during the
weekends. Ameena was to collect information related to insurance from the school library books
and journals and record it. Arun was to search for information about insurance companies
through online sources, especially in public journals, literature review, qualitative analysis, and
quantitative analysis. Fatemeh was to visit a local private insurance company and collect some
data for our project. My main role was to write the findings during the evening and weekend
group discussions, From our findings, United States has greatly benefited from privatization of

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health care services to its citizens, as the process helps in cutting down the cost in a way that
people can easily afford the services (Sohn & Jung, 2016 p.16). This has been easily been
implemented by Privatizing health insurance as it can cover medical bills for the patient. The
private sector of insurance has been doing well in countries like India providing 80% and 60%
outpatient and inpatient care services respectively. Therefore, private insurance has been proved t
it can do well in middle-income countries (Pauly et al., 2016 p. 369) Our group was very
efficient in collecting the data from available resources and making sure the everything run well.
It is always recommended to work as a team in group discussions (Rosen et al., 2018 p.33) We
ensured we collaborated in every bit of task, be it data collecting, recording, and discussion. In
case of any questions, we were eager to inquire from our tutor. Ameena played a big role in the
success of our project by ensuring everything run smoothly. He worked tirelessly even in the odd
hours after classes to ensure I get the collected data from the team members. Sometimes we
worked together in the library in search of the recommended journals. From the project, I have
come to learn that working as a team makes one achieve more compared to an individual.
Teamwork is very significant for any project's success.

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Bibliography
Pauly, M., Zweifel, P., Scheffler, R., Preker, A., and Bassett, M. (2016). Private Health
Insurance in Developing Countries. Health Affairs, 25(2), pp. 369-379.
Rosen, M., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A., Benishek, L., Thompson, D., Pronovost, P. and Weaver,
S. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care. American
Psychologist, 73(4), pp.433-450.
Sohn, M., & Jung, M. (2016). Effects of public and private health insurance on medical service
utilization in the National Health Insurance System: National panel study in the Republic of
Korea. BMC Health Services Research, 16(1). DOI: 10.1186/s12913-016-1746-2
Van der Haar, S., Koeslag-Kreunen, M., Euwe, E., & Segers, M. (2017). Team Leader
Structuring for Team Effectiveness and Team Learning in Command-and-Control Teams. Small-
Group Research, 48(2), 215-248. DOI: 10.1177/1046496417689897