Health insurance policy comes into life
General Director of Vietnam Social Security (VSS) Nguyen The Manh said that participating in health insurance brings many practical benefits to people, especially low-income families, when they are unfortunately sick or ill.
Health insurance participants are paid an unlimited amount of medical expenses by the health insurance fund, depending on the scope and level of benefits, which can be up to billions of VND/year. Thereby, health insurance has helped many people with health insurance cards overcome economic difficulties.
Health insurance also has a profound humanitarian meaning for the community because when everyone participates in health insurance together, healthy people will support sick people, thereby contributing significantly to the implementation of social justice in caring for and protecting people's health. It can be seen that the role, benefits, and significance of the health insurance policy are very large.
Over the past 15 years (July 1, 2009 - July 1, 2024), since the Vietnam Health Insurance Day, with the participation of the entire political system, the health insurance policy has truly entered life, with a strong change in awareness and action in implementing the health insurance policy from the Central to local levels. Up to now, localities have established Steering Committees to implement the health insurance policy.
In recent times, Vietnam Social Security has proactively coordinated with ministries, departments, branches, Party committees and local authorities to promptly provide synchronous, correct and drastic solutions.
On the basis of clearly understanding the difficulties in organizing and implementing social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance policies, Vietnam Social Security regularly and proactively assesses the implementation of policies and the impact of difficulties and shortcomings in the implementation process.
From there, the industry promptly proposes and recommends competent authorities to amend and supplement appropriate health insurance policies and laws.
15 years of many important results
It can be seen that over the past 15 years, the coverage of health insurance has increased rapidly and developed sustainably. Specifically, in 2008, before Vietnam Health Insurance Day, the whole country had only 39.7 million people participating in health insurance, the coverage rate reached 46.1% of the population.
In 2009, the first year of implementing Vietnam Health Insurance Day, the whole country had over 50 million people participating in health insurance (an increase of over 10 million people compared to 2008), the health insurance coverage rate reached 58.2% of the population.
By the end of 2023, the whole country had over 93.6 million people participating in health insurance, 2.3 times higher than in 2008, with health insurance coverage reaching 93.35% of the population.
To achieve that result, thanks to the important contribution of the industry's communication work, which is increasingly extensive, easy to understand, easy to remember, helping people clearly understand the benefits of the health insurance policy, thereby proactively and actively participating.
The General Director of Vietnam Social Security also said that the number of people with health insurance cards going to medical examination and treatment has increased rapidly every year. In 15 years, there have been over 2,120 million people using health insurance, with a total amount of over 993,000 billion VND.
In 2009, the whole country had 88.6 million health insurance-covered medical examinations with a total health insurance-covered medical examination expenditure of VND 15,396 billion. By 2015, the whole country had 130.1 million health insurance-covered medical examinations (an increase of 48% compared to 2009) with a total health insurance-covered medical examination expenditure of VND 47,855 billion (an increase of 211% compared to 2009).
In 2020, there were 167.3 million health insurance-covered medical examinations (an increase of 28.6% compared to 2015) with a total health insurance-covered medical examination and treatment expenditure of VND 101,740 billion (an increase of 122.6% compared to 2015).
By the end of 2023, the whole country will have 174 million health insurance examination and treatment visits (an increase of 4% compared to 2020) with a total health insurance examination and treatment expenditure of about VND 121,799 billion (an increase of 19.7% compared to 2020).
The health insurance system is well organized from the central to local levels. Public and private health insurance facilities have facilitated people to access and use health insurance services.
In recent times, the work of appraisal, inspection and examination has had positive changes, quickly and promptly detecting cases with signs of abuse or unreasonable use of the health insurance fund, contributing to reducing thousands of billions of VND in health insurance fund expenditure, improving the quality and efficiency of management and use of the health insurance fund.
In particular, the whole industry has promoted administrative procedure reform, reducing from 115 procedures (in 2015) to 25 procedures; strongly applying information technology and digital transformation in the coordination of health insurance examination and treatment.
To date, 100% of health insurance facilities have implemented health insurance services using citizen identification cards. Currently, Vietnam Social Security is piloting the authentication of biometric information on chip-embedded citizen identification cards in health insurance services, helping to improve the effectiveness of state management of health insurance services, and better ensure the rights of participants.
“In order to implement the health insurance policy sustainably and effectively, controlling health insurance treatment costs is one of the important tasks of the Vietnam Social Insurance sector.
Controlling health insurance costs aims to optimize the use of the health insurance fund, prevent and minimize unreasonable and wasteful costs, thereby having resources to serve patients, ensuring the rights of health insurance participants, optimizing the use of the health insurance fund effectively and in accordance with regulations" - General Director of Vietnam Social Security emphasized.
Source: https://kinhtedothi.vn/dien-bao-phu-bao-hiem-y-te-tang-nhanh-phat-trien-ben-vung.html
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