Health insurance buyers to benefit from fee hikes
Healthcare fee increases of some 30% from March 1 and 50% from July 1 will benefit the medically insured and will not affect patients without health insurance in the short term, according to the Ministry of Health.
Higher fees including payments for healthcare services and allowances for health workers will take effect from March 1 while rises in other fees will go into force at public health facilities from July 1 and private clinics from March 1.
As many as 1,887 technical healthcare services will see fees going up including checkups at hospitals, daily fees for inpatients, and other services which require the use of high-cost medical devices such as ultrasound, X-ray, blood testing, and surgery.
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Around 23.7 million poor people, children under six years old and social welfare beneficiaries will not be impacted by the healthcare service fee spike as they have a blanket health insurance coverage for health checkups and treatments.
Near-poor patients are subject to a 95% fee coverage by health insurance and the State budget pays 70% of the value of health insurance cards for them. Patients buying voluntary social insurance will not be much affected by fee increases as well.
Nguyen Nam Lien, head of the financial and planning department under the Ministry of Health, said healthcare service fees will be adjusted up gradually and increase the rights of health insurance card holders.
