Bangladesh Shasthyo Suroksha Karmasuchi (SSK)

Shasthyo Suroksha Karmasuchi is a health protection scheme developed by the Health Economics Unit of Bangladesh's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to reduce out-of-pocket health spending and improve access to care for the country's below-poverty-line population. The pilot launched in March 2016 in the Kalihati sub-district of Tangail District, later expanding to the neighboring Madhupur and Ghatail sub-districts, with support from Germany's KfW Development Bank, which contributed an additional 8 million euros to the scheme's health basket alongside 1 million euros in technical assistance over three years. Each enrolled household is provided coverage of 50,000 taka, about 620 dollars, a year against a government-financed annual premium of roughly 1,000 taka, about 12 dollars, through a simplified diagnosis-related-groups payment system, initially covering 50 diagnoses and later expanded to 78, run by a private insurance operator. By September 2017 the scheme had registered roughly 360,000 individuals in around 100,000 of the poorest households across the three pilot sub-districts, a combined population of more than 1.3 million, with the long-term aim of eventually covering all of Bangladesh's citizens.