Technical Workshop on Additional Health Insurance Benefit Package

The workshop’s objective is to present the finding from the review of countries experience on provision of additional health benefit package, drawing some major trends within OECD and ASEAN countries, as well as to allow stakeholders to discuss and provide inputs to the Government on possible policy options. The workshop takes place on 23 May 2019 and gather representatives of the Ministry of Health and Development Partners.

Viet Nam made great strides in increasing population coverage which now stands at 87 per cent of the population, relying on a mix contributory and non-contributory system. Achievement of such level of coverage in a few years only was made possible through a policy of exemptions and subsidies of contributions for vulnerable, near poor and meritorious population groups. In addition to financial protection and quality issues, Viet Nam now faces the challenge of maintaining the level of population coverage achieved. More specifically – and along with broader reforms on the overall health systems - this means addressing three concurrent issues:

Implementing additional strategies to close the coverage gap i.e. the missing 13 per cent population
Maintain and further extent coverage of households with capacity to contribute
Maintain in the system households who are gradually moving out of poverty and are no longer eligible for partial and/or total subsidies.

In the framework of the Health Insurance law revision, and in an attempt to address the issues mentioned above the Ministry of Health is looking into the option of providing additional level of benefits coverage (complementary and/or supplementary) to address expectations of higher income members for coverage of additional services and/or provide higher level of financial protection.

In order to support and inform the Government of Viet Nam on policy options, the ILO has undertaken a review of countries experiences to document how ASEAN and OECD countries are addressing the question of the provision of additional benefits and presented these findings to the Ministry fo Health and Development Partners on 23 May 2019. The findings served as a basis for discussion in order to identify and analyze the options for Viet Nam, their implications and feasibility.