Did the Health Card Program Ensure Access to Medical Care for the Poor during Indonesia's Economic Crisis?

The Indonesian Healthcard program was implemented in response to the economic crisis, which hit Indonesia in 1998, in order to preserve access to health care services for the poor. The Healthcard provided the households with subsidised care at public health care providers, while the providers themselves received budgetary support to compensate for the extra demand. This papers looks at the impact of this program on outpatient care utilisation, and, in particular, endeavours to disentangle the direct effect of the allocation of Healthcards from the indirect effect of the transfer of funds to health care facilities. It finds that the program resulted in a net increase in utilisation for the poor beneficiaries. For non-poor beneficiaries the program resulted in a substitution from private to public providers only. However, the largest effect of the program seems to have come from a general increase in the quality of public services resulting from the budgetary support they received through this program.