**5.3 Availability of health insurance**

Health insurance refers to a body that provides reliable healthcare financing for enrollees and it aims at ensuring equal access to quality healthcare services without financial hardship. The contribution of (social) health insurance in providing reliable healthcare financing cannot be overemphasised. This is because health insurance performs various benefits that help countries of the world to have access to reliable healthcare financing, and invariably move closer to achieving universal health coverage [12]. Generally, there seem to be consensus among global researchers that health insurance increases access to reliable healthcare financing [7, 16, 17]. Hence, enrolment in health insurance influences older people's access to reliable healthcare financing. Importantly, older people who are excluded from health insurance (as the case is in many African countries) are denied access to reliable healthcare financing. Policies that will ensure that older people are enrolled in health insurance are therefore germane in order to safeguard the healthcare of the elderly and to ensure that their access to reliable healthcare financing are enhanced.
