HCM City (VNA) - Increasing hoꦐspital fees and benefits from health insurancehelped increase the number of people buying health insurance in HCM City lastyear by nearly 662,000 compared to 2015, according to the city’s SocialInsurance Agency.

At ameeting reviewing the agency’s activities last year held last week, Cao VanSang, the agency’s head, said that the city last year had around 6.4 million ofpeople buy health insurance. The numberis the city’s highest compared to last several years, Sang said, and added thathealth insurance covered 78 percent of the city’s total population. This year,the city aims to increase the coverage to 80.7 percent, he said. Althoughhospital fees hiked by 30 percent last March under the Ministry of Health’sroadmap to the end of 2017, the city’s health insurance fund still ensures thebalance and its abundance is nearly 700 billion VND (30.8 million USD). The fundin 2015 was 1.1 trillion VND (48 million USD), but the city only kept 22 percentaccording to the government’s regulation. The rest was used to buy and providefree health insurance cards for people near the poverty threshold last year. Healthinsurance helps reduce the burden of paying higher hospital fees which couldreach 500 millionVND-600 million VND (22,026 USD-26,431 USD). A52-year-old woman of Dong Nai Province who suffers from breast cancer said thatshe enjoys benefits from health insurance for her treatment. Sang saidthat the cost for every outpatient and inpatient to examine and treat each timeis the highest in the country, with the average 1.5 times higher than in otherprovinces and cities. People whobuy household-based health insurance receive the discount. The second memberpays 70 percent, 60 percent for a third one, 50 percent for a fourth one and 40percent for the fifth one. Thebenefits helped increase the number of people buying under this method lastyear by more than 300,000 compared to 2015. More than2 million people bought compulsory social insurance last year, nearly 7,000people voluntary social insurance, and more than 2 million people unemploymentinsurance. Accordingto Sang, the number of people with voluntary social insurance reduced becausethe insurance did not attract people. They pay the total amount to buy socialinsurance while people who buy compulsory social insurance pay a part of thecharge. [Their employers have to pay the larger part for them.] People whobuy voluntary social insurance are at least 15 years old.-VNA