Does Health Insurance Improve Health Access?

In India, the subsidized health insurance Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) provides health coverage for households below the poverty line. The objective of this paper is to estimate the impact of the RSBY on health access for the beneficiaries. The identification strategy is based on a difference-in-difference approach which relies on the heterogeneity of policy implementation in different Indian states, and on longitudinal data from the Indian Human Development Survey. The results reveal that the RSBY did not have a positive impact on health access. These counterintuitive results can be explained by the specific design of the insurance.