[Subgroup-health] Mission statement v3 and 1st proposal for a tentative Agenda of our meeting in Cartagena

Wed Oct 29 17:40:00 CET 2008

Dear all,

Don't be shocked to hear that I failed to spot a mission statement at all in HealthSubgroup_MissionStatementV3.doc.

Health insurance may or may not protect poor people, but that's not a mission statement. Nor is the fact that the health sub-group is one of the working sub-groups of the "CGAP working group on Microinsurance", and although there are doubtlessly many interesting key questions On the role of HMI etc to be addressed, such a list is hardly a mission statement either.

Re-reading the document again, the most comparable to my understanding of a mission statement I find is:

"To promote HMI as an efficient risk management tool for poor people that also strengthens and enhances social protection strategies. The main challenge therefore is to harmonize the goal of promoting HMI as an efficient financial tool with that of promoting equitable health care systems. Accordingly, Microinsurance schemes should not only be evaluated in terms of technical aspects (e.g. financial viability), but also on their capacity to reach social protection outcomes.
To achieve this purpose the HMI Sub-group will develop policy guidelines for governments, donors and providers of HMI, as well as tools for the assessment and monitoring of HMI, based on case studies, evidence based research and knowledge sharing amongst different actors involved.
To avoid duplications and in order to develop synergies the HMI Sub-group will work in close collaboration with other working groups of the Microinsurance Network as well as other networks and consortiums."

But, frankly speaking, I still found it a bit fuzzy (and overambitious in wanting to develop policy guidelines for governments and harmonizing HMI with equitable health care systems etc).

The way I see it, the proper mission statement in David's document is

"The network's mission is to promote the development and proliferation of good-value insurance products for low-income persons. To achieve that mission the network:
·       commissions and conducts research;
·       distils and disseminates lessons learnt to promote client-driven and good-value insurance;
·       raises awareness on the demand and potential for Microinsurance among key stakeholders;
·       contributes to the development of good practices among insurance underwriters."

I like that better because it's concise and has about the length I think appropriate for a mission statement. I would just replace "insurance underwriters" by "insurance practitioners" because the former is ambiguous (and excluding). And I would add one bullet point:

 *   encourages the sharing of experience among its members and with the Microinsurance community;

Kind regards

Peter
+ 41 22 909 7371

________________________________
From: subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu [mailto:subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu] On Behalf Of David Dror
Sent: mercredi, 29. octobre 2008 15:42
To: bert.opdebeeck at brs-vzw.be
Cc: subgroup-health at microfinance.lu; subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu
Subject: Re: [Subgroup-health] Mission statement v3 and 1st proposal for a tentative Agenda of our meeting in Cartagena

Dear Bert and all,
As already said in my previous 2 mails, I agree that we should move to action, and I am glad that we seem to have resolved a misunderstanding about the mission statement.
Greetings and regards,
DD

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:14 AM, <bert.opdebeeck at brs-vzw.be<mailto:bert.opdebeeck at brs-vzw.be>> wrote:

Dear David,

Thanks for your input.

I might have expressed myself wrongly in my previous email, but I'm neither in favour of a final decision on the mission statement in Cartagena by the group that happens to be present then and there. I agree that also other members of the health working group should have the right to voice their opinion. But the discussion on the document should come at an end at some point. We should thus (try to) come to an agreement during the meeting on the mission of the working group, leaving the other members a fixed time after the meeting to comment or approve.

Having said that, Valérie sent us a first version of the mission statement early April, leaving every member plenty of time to react on the document. I thus agree with Harrie that the focus of the meeting should not be on re-discussing the statement in detail but on how to proceed, in other words translating our mission in an action plan.

Best regards,

Bert

_________________________________________

BRS  -  Coordinator Microinsurance
Philipssite 5 b10, BE-3001 Leuven -   Belgium
Tel: +32 16 27 96 13 -  Fax: +32 16 27 96 91
bert.opdebeeck at brs-vzw.be<mailto:bert.opdebeeck at brs-vzw.be> - www.brs-vzw.be<http://www.brs-vzw.be>
_________________________________________

BRS - solidarity based banking & insurance in developing countries

  "David Dror" <daviddror at socialre.org<mailto:daviddror at socialre.org>>
  Sent by: subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu<mailto:subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu>

  29/10/2008 10:34

To
        "John Pott" <john.pott at akdn.org<mailto:john.pott at akdn.org>>, "Valérie Schmitt-Diabate" <schmitt-diabate at ilo.org<mailto:schmitt-diabate at ilo.org>>, "subgroup-health at microfinance.lu<mailto:subgroup-health at microfinance.lu>" <subgroup-health at microfinance.lu<mailto:subgroup-health at microfinance.lu>>
cc

Subject
        Re: [Subgroup-health] Mission statement v3 and 1st proposal for a        tentative Agenda of our meeting in Cartagena

Dear all,
Please find attached draft 4 of the mission statement, which reflects my understanding of what this sub-group is all about, after having talked to a few people. The attached text is shorter, and includes essentially those issues on which we seem to have agreement (leaving the door wide open that in the future we add or change topics as useful).
May I repeat my plea that the mission statement should be adopted by consensus, NOT BY VOTE BY THE PARTIAL GROUP THAT WILL BE IN CARTAGENA. Email can help garner consensus, and all who care to be involved shold have equal opportunity to participate.
Thanks and regards to all,
David

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:25 PM, John Pott <john.pott at akdn.org<mailto:john.pott at akdn.org>> wrote:

Dear Valerie,

 I would like to join the several voices, including that of my colleague Peter Wrede, that call for a priority focus on developing the "on the ground experience" that strives to answer the first question:-

 On the role of HMI - " Why does the vast majority of the poor rank health as their top microinsurance need? How do they expect microinsurance to meet those needs? Is the industry responding to this adequately?"

I am attaching two charts which in a very simplified manner illustrate an amalgam of David Dror's work in India and ours (AKAM's) experience in Northern Pakistan which may provide some clues. I would like to suggest that a discussion of the make up of the health burden is important. The make-up is illustrated in the charts for a five year period in the pie chart and then as a typical time series as given in the bar chart.  I would hope the discussion could be followed by a proposal for research work on how adequately insurance is currently addressing the various components of the overall burden; and more importantly how in a substantially re-engineered fashion an insurance package could far more effectively address the burden in the future.

My hunch is that when the poor express interest in health insurance they may be searching for a health solution to their health burden rather than insurance per se. We have to help them with the health solution, which should almost certainly include an element of traditional insurance but in order to represent more immediate value to them the package may need to include other low cost features as well.

For reference to David's work please see

 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1016701

With best regards and looking forward to seeing you in Cartagena.

John Pott, Project Manager, Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance - Microinsurance Initiative

________________________________

From: subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu<mailto:subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu> [mailto:subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu<mailto:subgroup-health-bounces at microfinance.lu>] On Behalf Of Valérie Schmitt-Diabate
Sent: lundi, 27. octobre 2008 17:23

To: subgroup-health at microfinance.lu<mailto:subgroup-health at microfinance.lu>

Subject: [Subgroup-health] Mission statement v3 and 1st proposal for a tentative Agenda of our meeting in Cartagena

Dear all,

Please find attached a revised version of our mission statement including all your comments and an updated list of the subgroup members. As you may see the paragraph "Our framework" has been modified according to the CGAP working group's modifications and its transformation into the "Microinsurance Network".

I am pleased to confirm that this year the health microinsurance sub-group will have a long and - hopefully - productive working session in Cartagena; it will take place on Wednesday 5th of November, from 14h00 to 18h00 in sala de comision 1.

I think we could take this opportunity to choose the key questions we want to address in 2009 and start working on them.

To ease the process we could maybe identify what research each of us plans to conduct in 2009 and what the field projects we plan to work on are. We will then see if it is possible to capitalize on these activities to serve one or more of the priority areas in our mission statement.

We can also consider developing specific activities from scratch for the subgroup, but this will be more cost demanding!

Maybe we could also take this opportunity to finalize the mission statement and consider what will be done with it.  Should it be circulated for instance?

Since we only have a tiny little week left before our sub-group meeting in Cartagena, I would suggest that those who want to should suggest other issues which can be raised during this meeting, so that we can come up with a tentative agenda by next Friday.

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,

Valerie

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Hon. Professor of health insurance, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Access my publications freely at: http://ssrn.com/author=183410 (Social Science Research Network)[attachment "HealthSubgroup_MissionStatementV4.doc" deleted by BERT OPDEBEECK/U95699/CERA] _______________________________________________

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--
Chairman, the Micro Insurance Academy, New Delhi (www.microinsuranceacademy.org<http://www.microinsuranceacademy.org>)
Hon. Professor of health insurance, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Access my publications freely at: http://ssrn.com/author=183410 (Social Science Research Network)
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