By the end of 2023, the country will have 93.3 percent of the population participating in health insurance. The Health Insurance Fund has paid more than VND 124,000 billion to nearly 175 million people for medical examination and treatment. However, according to patients' feedback, health insurance buyers do not have many benefits and they are paying unreasonable premiums.
Arriving at the Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital’s campus 2 in Thu Duc City, a 32 year old woman living in District 1 said that she borrowed VND5 million from relatives for her mother’s medical examination but she fretted the money was not enough as her mother was diagnosed to have breast cancer.
The woman said that she comes from a poverty-stricken household and she was a garment worker.
According to Deputy Director Diep Bao Tuan of the Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital, most patients who come to the hospital for examination have the same worries about finances and often go for examination when the disease is in a severe stage. Therefore, the hospital management has directed departments to pay special attention to these cases to promptly provide support solutions.
However, the hospital's financial resources are limited, so when the Ministry of Health has recently proposed in the draft Health Insurance Law (amended) to pay for screening and early detection costs for 6 groups of common diseases including breast cancer, cervical cancer, the hospital and people are very excited.
Deputy Director Le Hoang Qui of Binh Thanh District Hospital said that the hospital receives most outpatients with health insurance cards and nearly 85 percent are elderly people. In 2023, the hospital will receive more than 57,000 insured patients; worse, nearly 3,000 of them were diagnosed with cancer and 75 percent are elderly people.
Moreover, the number of people newly diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure increased by 10 percent to 15 percent a year.
According to the Ministry of Health’s statistics, more than 15.5 million people visited medical facilities for examinations and treatments related to diabetes in 2023 and they had to pay up to more than VND6,700 billion a year. Meanwhile, nearly 23 million patients arrived at healthcare institutions for medical examinations and treatment of high blood pressure in the same year. High blood pressure sufferers pay more than VND6,000 billion a year for medical costs.
In the submission of the Health Insurance Law project (amended) to the Government, the Ministry of Health proposed to adjust the health insurance premium in each period. In the draft Law on Health Insurance (amended), the Ministry of Health also proposed that the Health Insurance Fund cover the costs of early diagnosis and treatment of a number of diseases such as cervical cancer, breast cancer, hypertension, and diabetes.
Director Tran Thi Trang of the Health Insurance Department under the Ministry of Health informed that this proposal is based on studies on health economics, cost effectiveness and reality, which many countries around the world have done with effective and positive outcomes.
Furthermore, early diagnosis and detection of many non-communicable diseases will help reduce medical and treatment costs in the future, and prevent many aggravating diseases and costly treatment.
Explaining this proposal, a representative of the Ministry of Health cited that currently, each year Vietnam records more than 180,000 cancer cases and the fatal disease kills more than 120,000 people annually. In 2023, treatment costs for 6 common cancer groups namely breast, lung, liver, colon, stomach, and prostate from the Health Insurance Fund mounted to nearly VND6,200 billion.
Along with that, the cost of treating other chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and diabetes is more than VND12,000 billion.
Therefore, in the policy impact assessment report of the revised Health Insurance Law project, the Ministry of Health said that screening for type 2 diabetes would save the Health Insurance Fund about VND 162 billion yearly in the first 10 years of the law implementation. At the same time, some VND2,089 billion taken from the state budget will pay for the treatment of cases detected from screening.
Regarding cancer screening, if early screening methods for cervical cancer are applied, it will help prevent about 280,000 deaths and more than 7.2 million people will have a chance to live longer.
The Ministry of Health assesses that solutions to expand screening, diagnosis and early treatment of some diseases will help increase people's financial security; In particular, people will be paid by the Health Insurance Fund so that patients can cut their medical spending from currently 43 percent to about 23 percent by 2025.
