Cheikh Mbengue, an expert from Abt Associates on community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes in Africa, said something that perked my ears last Wednesday at a USAID After Hours Seminar on microinsurance. He said that he thinks CBHIs can't function effectively without subsidies. No one has really talked about subsidies in the BOP space. The message is always, "get prices down low enough, quality up high enough, distribution wide enough, and you've got a market at the BOP."

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