Paper describes how excluded poor, rural and informal workers associate in community level Micro health Insurance Units (MIUs) to provide some financial protection and they:
* can encourage the rural and low-income populations to raise more resources for healthcare than would otherwise have been possible
* can and do improve people's access to drugs and primary care & hospital care where it is not offered by the national scheme by directing the additional resources to healthcare
* are exposed to risks of insolvency, due to small group size, underfunding, low technical and managerial skills and no access to risk management infrastructure
Report proposes to operate a reinsurance plan - Social Re - specifically designed to guarantee the solvency of MIUs, and thus enlarge the offer of viable health insurance for the poor and the informal economy:
* to attract clients, MIUs must guarantee to remain solvent
* they must cede risks to reinsurance yet MIUs have no access to reinsurance
* Social Re in the first known attempt to professionalize the role of MIUs as first-line insurers, and to provide them with reinsurance that commercial reinsurers will not offer