Why Health Micro-Insurance? Currently, both the state-managed National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) and the privately-managed Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) are not able to address majority of the poor people's health care financing problems. The former covers some twenty-one million Filipinos who are mostly in the formal sector, and the latter focus more on the upper 2% of the market. The informal sectors that majority are poor are left unattended.

    But Filipinos by nature exhibit ingenuity wherein problems become opportunities. For some innovative communities they were able to come up with a community-based health care financing approach or commonly known as Damayang Pangkalusugan.

    Health micro-insurance or Damayang Pangkalusugan (DpK) is defined as a scheme for mobilizing and utilizing resources through a risk-sharing mechanism to finance the health care needs of the members in a manner that reflects values of solidarity and shared responsibility for health care (Soriano, 1999). In short, it makes health care or medical expenses more affordable for people who join the system.

     People who are enrolled in a health insurance regularly pay in small, fixed amounts, which are pooled into a common health fund. This fund will be used to pay for the expenses incurred by a member who suddenly falls ill or requires a doctor's services. It works because members pay for their health insurance in small, affordable amounts while they are well and earning, rather than worry where to get a large amount of money quickly when they suddenly get sick.