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Govt embarks on health insurance

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Govt embarks on health insurance
Mahbuba Zannat, back from Bangkok

Govt embarks on health insurance

The government in a pioneering move has set to introduce health insurance programme as an alternative healthcare financing for the country's 5 crore poor people from early next year.

Under the system, each of the poor would be given health insurance card to cover their medical expenses. The government will pay the insurance premium from general taxes as the insurance cost, according to the health ministry.

"We will form a taskforce to this effect this month (July). We would try our best to implement the health insurance programme from early 2012," Prasanta Bhushan Barua, joint chief of the ministry's Health Economics Unit, told The Daily Star.

As part of the effort, the government delegates recently have visited some neighbouring countries where health insurance has been adopted successfully as an alternative healthcare financing.

Prasanta Bhushan was in the 15-member visiting team to watch the health insurance model in Bangkok, Hyderabad, and Delhi to verify the design, implementation process, and sustainability of health insurance programme in Bangladesh.

"Beginning with a pilot project for the 31 percent of the country's poor people, we would try to scale up for universal health coverage in phases," he said, adding that the first pilot project would begin soon in Rangunia of Chittagong and Debhata of Satkhira. The two upazilas are home to around 6 lakh people.

The socio-economic study would begin next month to find out the exact figure of the poor people in those localities, he said.

The ministry sources said the taskforce, headed by Health Minister AFM Ruhal Haque, would be the steering body for policy support and supervision of the total programme.

We should devise a way of our own to implement the programme, said the visiting team, adding that a combination of India's Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) and Rajiv Arogyashri Health Insurance may suit for Bangladesh. The Thai model would be too costly to implement for this resource-poor country where per capita health expenditure is only $7.5, the team said.

The ministry initially thinks of providing secondary level health services along with some tertiary cares to the poor people under the alternative health financing. The people with health cards would be able to get treatment free of cost in listed public and private hospitals, they said.

Under the RSBY programme, people are provided secondary healthcares. Preparing a card spending Rs 30 only, a five-member family can get the insurance facility up to Rs 30,000 a year. Rajiv Arogyashri Health Insurance programme, however, covers primary to tertiary level healthcare.
 
Will it really be feasible to provide health insurance to 50 million people with such a low cost of the insurance??? This is quite natural what will happen... most of the clinics, pharmacy and diagnostic center will generate fake bill and government will have to provide tax payers money to those people. If a 5 member family in India can get up to 30000 rupee by paying only 30 rupee then for 50 million people government will have to spent 450 billion taka or approximately 6.5 billion usd at the higher end. Can government afford to pay this?
 
Will it really be feasible to provide health insurance to 50 million people with such a low cost of the insurance??? This is quite natural what will happen... most of the clinics, pharmacy and diagnostic center will generate fake bill and government will have to provide tax payers money to those people. If a 5 member family in India can get up to 30000 rupee by paying only 30 rupee then for 50 million people government will have to spent 450 billion taka or approximately 6.5 billion usd at the higher end. Can government afford to pay this?

This is How it works.

RSBY is a Government sponsored scheme for the BPL population of India. The majority of the financing, about 75 percent, is provided by the Government of India (GOI), while the remainder is paid by the respective state government. Government of India’s contribution is 90 percent in case of North-eastern states and Jammu and Kashmir and respective state Governments need to pay only 10% of the premium.
Beneficiaries need to pay only Rs. 30 as the registration fee. This amount shall be used for incurring administrative expenses under the scheme.

::RSBY::

RSBY::Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna
 
Will it really be feasible to provide health insurance to 50 million people with such a low cost of the insurance??? This is quite natural what will happen... most of the clinics, pharmacy and diagnostic center will generate fake bill and government will have to provide tax payers money to those people. If a 5 member family in India can get up to 30000 rupee by paying only 30 rupee then for 50 million people government will have to spent 450 billion taka or approximately 6.5 billion usd at the higher end. Can government afford to pay this?
This scheme is very successful in Andhra Pradesh. The pharmacy's license is at stake if any foul play got detected, so it is their responsibility to keep tabs on their bills.
You question about affording has a simple answer based on probability(entire insurance industry relies on this). What is the probability that a given person in Bangladesh gets a serious illness in a given financial year?
 
I must appreciate any health insurance scheme by govt by which the poor beneficiaries can be helped. And I would recommend to reduce our defence budget and increase reserve for such schemes. If you ever go to any govt hospitals like Dhaka Medical College, then you would see how poor people pass through miserable pains and health problem, sometimes without minimum cares. Once I saw a poor man to die in front of me in Cardiac Arrest. If you go to Cardiology Department in DMC then you would see how poor people die all most everyday.
 

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