Resource
Vietnam: Social Health Insurance: Current issues and policy recommandations
Summary (English)
This paper aims to provide an overview of the social health insurance scheme in Vietnam, including its historical development and progress, the challenges faced by the scheme and some suggested policy recommendations. Indeed, Vietnam¿s health sector has made remarkable achievements offering a widespread health care delivery network, an increasing number of qualified workers, an expanding national public health programme, etc. In 2006, the total number of people covered reached 30.5 million (about 37% of the population), of whom 11.2 million were poor people. However, at the same time, the sector also has to urgently deal with administrative and financial challenges. This implies addressing issues of labour mobility, widening inequalities, an increase in poverty and the impact of the predicted ageing population trend as well as coping with the necessity to cover workers of the private sector and workers of rural areas, the latter representing 70% of the population. Moreover, currently, most health sector spending is based on government budget and on user fees and so an important task is to reform current payment mechanisms. Besides which, the health system needs to be integrated into comprehensive social and economic policies and strategies.
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Note
Technical Paper published at the ILO Asia-Pacific Regional High-Level Meeting on Socially-Inclusive Strategies to Extend Social Security Coverage, held in New Delhi, India, 19-20 May 2008.