Enjoy higher benefits when participating in health insurance for 5 consecutive years

On January 1, 2019, the Ministry of Health announced that Circular 39/2018/TT-BYT issued by the Ministry of Health regulating the unification of prices for medical examination and treatment services (KCB) covered by health insurance (HI) among hospitals of the same rank nationwide (replacing Circular 15/TT-BYT dated May 30, 2018) will take effect from January 15, 2019.

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This Circular applies to medical facilities, units, organizations and individuals involved in the process of medical examination and treatment and payment and settlement of medical examination and treatment costs under the health insurance regime. Prices of medical examination and treatment services prescribed in this Circular are built on the basis of direct costs and salaries to ensure medical examination, care, treatment of patients and implementation of medical technical services.

Compared with current regulations, the price structure of medical examination and treatment services is not changed, but only the basic salary calculated into service prices is changed from 1.15 million VND (according to regulations in Decree No. 66/2013/ND-CP dated June 27, 2013) to the basic salary of 1.39 million VND (according to regulations in Decree No. 72/2018/ND-CP dated May 15, 2018).

Accordingly, the average price adjustment increased by 3.23%, of which the price of medical examination and bed/day increased by 11.1% on average, and the price of medical technical services increased by 3.01%.

According to the Ministry of Health's assessment, this price increase will not affect the poor, ethnic minorities living in difficult socio-economic areas, people living in especially difficult socio-economic areas, children under 6 years old, people living in island districts and island communes; people with meritorious services to the revolution, relatives such as fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, children of people with meritorious services to the revolution... because the state budget and other financial sources buy health insurance cards, when going to medical examination and treatment, health insurance will pay 100%.

For the near-poor, they only have to pay 5% (while the average price adjustment rate increases by 3.23%) so the impact is insignificant. For those with health insurance cards, they have to pay 20% of the health insurance costs, but the impact is not much because the co-payment only increases by an average of 3.23% of the 20% co-payment.