SimIns health financing policy tool
SimIns is a computerized tool to aid in making health financing policy decisions. It does so by projecting health expenditure and funding for a 10 year time period. Thereby it allows to evaluate the feasibility of alternative mixes of financing sources, including social health insurance, community-based health insurance and government budget lines. It can be applied to both existing or planned schemes.
New SimIns version - May 2008
Version 2.1 of SimIns has been released in May 2008. If you are currently using a previous version, please contact us at simins@who.int to obtain the latest version.
This version allows you to export SimIns output data for use with other programs, among other changes and bug fixes.
To find out the version number of your SimIns installation, see at the top left of the main screen.
When using SimIns, please use decimal notation as it is used in English. The decimal separator is "." (period/dot) and not "," (comma). E.g. three-and-a-half should be written as 3.5 and not 3,5.
SimIns uses
SimIns contributes to financial planning in health insurance over the medium term, predicting the broad contours of health financing possibilities. As such, it has four principal uses:
- To illustrate the implications of initial policies for a health insurance scheme and thus supporting analysis of different policy options.
- To determine contributions, utilization rates and health care costs that ensure financial equilibrium of a health insurance scheme under dynamic conditions.
- To demonstrate the impact that the introduction of health insurance would have on the overall structure of health financing.
- To illustrate the impact of health insurance on public finance.
Obtaining SimIns
The SimIns software was developed and is jointly owned by WHO and GTZ. Its authors are Guy Carrin and Chris James. SimIns is available on request. Please send an email to: simins@who.int for a copy and further information.