Affordable access to health care was a challenge for the elderly in Ghana until the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2003, where the elderly were exempted from premium payments. The study employs household-level data from the Ghana Living Standard Survey to investigate whether exempting the elderly from health insurance premium payments affects healthcare utilisation and labour market outcomes of the elderly in Ghana. The study finds that having health insurance increases the elderly visits to a health facility and the probability of being treated by health professionals. For labour market outcomes, the results indicate that free health insurance increases both the number of hours worked and earnings of the elderly and the size of the increase in earnings in agriculture is slightly larger for females than with males.

在 2003 年引入国家健康保险计划之前，加纳老年人可以负担得起的医疗保健服务一直是一项挑战，在该计划中，老年人免缴保费。该研究利用加纳生活水平调查中的家庭数据来调查免除老年人的医疗保险费是否会影响加纳老年人的医疗保健利用率和劳动力市场结果。研究发现，拥有健康保险会增加老年人到医疗机构的就诊次数和接受医疗专业人员治疗的可能性。对于劳动力市场结果，结果表明，免费医疗保险增加了老年人的工作时间和收入，而女性在农业收入的增长幅度略大于男性。