Government Reactivates 625,000 BPJS Health Recipients

Social Affairs Minister Saifullah Yusuf stated that 5.6%, or 625,221 people, have undergone reactivation as recipients of the Premium Assistance Programme for the Health Social Security Organising Agency (PBI BPJS Kesehatan). This figure remains very small compared to the number of PBI BPJS Kesehatan participants deactivated by the government in January 2026, totalling 11 million. Gus Ipul, as Saifullah Yusuf is known, said that of the 625,221 beneficiaries who have been reactivated or automatically activated, 106,000 are patients with catastrophic diseases. “The 11 million are undergoing a validation and verification process in the field with the Central Statistics Agency,” Saifullah said at the Ministry of Social Affairs office in Central Jakarta on Tuesday, 31 March 2026. He mentioned that for the Determination Letter (SK) in March 2026, 246,280 PBI BPJS Kesehatan beneficiaries have already reactivated. Meanwhile, 276,788 beneficiaries for the April 2026 SK are still in process. Saifullah said the field verification between the Ministry of Social Affairs and BPS for the 11 million deactivated participants has reached 98%. The Ministry of Social Affairs will announce the results of the field verification for those 11 million deactivated participants in early April. Previously, the government deactivated 11 million PBI BPJS Kesehatan participants at the beginning of January 2026. The government reasoned that the deactivation of PBI BPJS Kesehatan participants was the result of updating social assistance recipient data through the implementation of the National Single Socio-Economic Data (DTSEN). This data is used as the single reference for all government assistance programmes. The policy sparked controversy because the government did not notify it beforehand. Many PBI BPJS Kesehatan participants who wanted to seek healthcare were forced to go unserved because their BPJS Kesehatan cards were inactive.