Health insurance (HI) is a superior social security policy of the Party and the State, with humane and humanitarian significance and profound community sharing. HI is organized by the State not for profit, aiming to mobilize community contributions, share disease risks and reduce the financial burden of each citizen when they are sick, ill, have accidents...

After the Law on Health Insurance was promulgated in 2008, the number of people participating in health insurance increased dramatically over the years: The rate of population participating in health insurance increased from 57% (in 2009) to 74.7% (in 2015 - the first year the revised Law on Health Insurance 2014 took effect) and by the end of June 2023, it had reached nearly 92% with nearly 91 million people participating in health insurance.

This result shows that most people have participated in and benefited from the humane and superior health insurance policy of our Party and State. This is an important premise for our country to continue striving to realize the goal of achieving 95% of the population participating in health insurance by 2025 according to Resolution 20-NQ/TW dated October 25, 2017 of the 6th Conference of the 12th Central Executive Committee on strengthening the protection, care and improvement of people's health.

Along with that, the opportunity for people to access health insurance services is increasingly expanding, the number of health insurance treatments paid by the health insurance fund is increasing.

According to statistics from Vietnam Social Security, in recent years, the Health Insurance Fund has paid over 100,000 billion VND each year for health insurance examination and treatment. In the first 6 months of 2023 alone, nearly 83 million people nationwide received inpatient and outpatient health insurance examination and treatment. The amount of assessment and payment was over 57,000 billion VND. In many cases, the Health Insurance Fund has paid for health insurance examination and treatment costs up to billions of VND.

In particular, in recent times, the Social Insurance has coordinated with the Ministry of Health in developing, amending and supplementing legal policies and reforming administrative procedures in health insurance examination and treatment.

Currently, people can use citizen identification cards instead of paper health insurance cards to go to the hospital for medical examination and treatment, helping to simplify procedures and save time for people when doing medical examination and treatment procedures.

The initial application of biometrics at medical examination and treatment facilities not only ensures people's rights, but also saves costs and strengthens management of agencies, preventing waste and profiteering of the health insurance fund.

With the application of VssID, people can know their medical examination and treatment history; a premise for building an electronic health book. Providing and sharing data on health insurance participants, health insurance examination and treatment to build a national database on people's health. Thus, the application of this technology has helped increase interaction between people, medical examination and treatment facilities and social insurance agencies.

Minh Hoa (t/h)