Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Social Insurance Agency Cao Van Sang yesterday said his agency and the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs were submiting city leaders to provide medical insurance cards to 62,300 people in the city whose economic condition is close to poverty line.
Total spending on medical insurance cards is around VND2.9 billion (US$131,269) which will be extracted from city's medical insurance fund in 2015. At first, the insurance company will provide them with three month medical cards from October 1 to December 31, 2015.
As per the medical insurance regulation issued by the city People's Committee those who are in close to poverty line will be supported 70 percent of health insurance spending and they just pay 30 percent of medical insurance cost.
However, very a few people on close-to-poverty line buy health ínurance. As a result, the city has still over 62,300 in close-to-poverty line people without health insurance.
Accordingly, the agency and department submitted its proposal to the city People's Committee to support them with 100% health insurance cost.
According to Mr. Sang, as of July, 2015, only 70 percent of city's population has received health insurance. The rate is much lower than the set target of 76 percent in 2015 and 90 percent in 2020.
Therefore, the support will help taking care of poor people's health condition as well as widen the coverage of health insurance in the city.
