On the afternoon of October 31, the National Assembly discussed the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Health Insurance (HI).
National Assembly Delegate (NAD) Ta Van Ha (Quang Nam delegation) mentioned the content of medical examination and treatment quality and lack of health insurance drugs.
According to delegate Ta Van Ha, voters expressed their frustration when the quality of health insurance examinations was not guaranteed, and sometimes there was a lack of medicine dispensed to patients covered by health insurance.
"Health insurance services have too many shortcomings and problems, so voters are very upset. Going to the doctor requires waiting, which is very tiring because of overload and lack of medicine," said the delegate.
According to the Quang Nam delegation, the drug lists of health insurance are often lacking due to payment rates, file appraisal, time, and complicated procedures.
There are even cases where there is no medicine left because the insurance exceeds the payment limit. Therefore, voters are upset because they have lost money to participate in health insurance but the quality of service is not up to the required level.
Regarding this amendment to the law, delegates suggested that the operation of health insurance should be made transparent. Once the level is determined, the amount of money available in a year, and the revenue and expenditure must be made public.
Because according to the delegate, people do not know how much money is allocated in total, whether it has been used up or not, and how much is left? From there, he suggested that it is necessary to publicize the annual health insurance balance and improve the quality of health insurance examination and treatment.
Regarding improving service quality, the delegate from Quang Nam proposed creating conditions and opportunities for other economic sectors to continue participating in the health insurance market to create competition and give people more choices.
"Now, students going to school are required to buy health insurance. Meanwhile, parents who already have foreign insurance for their children are not recognized and still have to spend money to buy it at school. Any insurance is insurance, but in the end, they still have to buy two in parallel," the delegate cited and said that there is still a monopoly.
Delegate Ta Van Ha emphasized that this is a stage that requires a breakthrough, eliminating monopoly to improve the quality of health insurance.
At the discussion session, delegate Nguyen Thi Lan Anh (Lao Cai delegation) proposed to study and amend relevant regulations to ensure the rights of people with health insurance cards who have to buy medicine and medical equipment on the list of health insurance payments because medical examination and treatment facilities lack medicine or medical equipment and cannot provide them to patients.
Delegates said that this has been happening for a long time, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control period, increasing out-of-pocket medical costs for patients.
Therefore, delegate Nguyen Thi Lan Anh suggested that the drafting agency study regulations in the draft law on the handling mechanism for this case to ensure the rights of health insurance participants.
Delegate Dinh Van The (Gia Lai delegation) proposed to supplement regulations on cases of shortage of drugs and medical supplies due to objective reasons, force majeure and the inability to transfer patients to other medical examination and treatment facilities.
According to the delegate, if the patient must buy the medicine and medical supplies themselves as prescribed by the doctor, the medical examination and treatment facility is responsible for refunding the patient the amount of money spent on medicine and medical supplies before the patient is discharged from the hospital; synthesizing payments with the social insurance agency and being responsible for the payment request documents.
