Hospitals providing free health care for the 'rich'

Hospitals providing free health care for the 'rich'

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The health card system aims to provide a free health service for
the poor. But while many destitute people are unable to enter the
program due to their lack of an ID card, employees of several
hospitals admitted on Monday that many of the recipients look
affluent.

Meri Silalahi, a nurse at Tarakan hospital in Central Jakarta,
said that many of the cardholders were people with a university
education, who owned cellular phones and wore gold jewelry.

"The hospital offers services free of charge to anyone who
holds a health card. We don't ask those people how they obtained
the card, because they would become angry if we were to do so,"
Meri told The Jakarta Post.

Tunggul Setiabudi, an employee at Koja hospital in North
Jakarta, also said that he often received complaints from nurses
who treated patients holding health cards.

"Some nurses told me that some patients with health cards were
hospitalized here but did not deserve the free health facility,"
Tunggul told the Post.

However, like Meri, Tunggul also did not ask health card
holders about how they had obtained their card, saying that he
had no authority to do so.

Head of the City Health Agency Abdul Chalik Masulili said last
week the health cards were often counterfeited and sold to people
who had no right to receive free health services.

Masulili also admitted that many poor people could not enter
the program because they were unable to produce a city ID card.

According to the City Statistics Bureau, there are more than
30,000 families or at least 100,000 poor people in Jakarta who do
not have a city ID card.

Both Meri and Tunggul said on Monday they had received
warnings from the health agency about counterfeit health cards.
But they said they had never come across any.

Health cards are issued by doctors at the nearly 300 health
centers in the capital for poor people with a Jakarta ID at the
recommendation of subdistrict heads.

All hospital fees for health card holders become the
responsibility of the city administration. The free services
include surgery.

"We will provide any health service needed by a patients with
a health card as long as the facility is available here," said
Nurul Huda, a staff member of the public service division at Koja
hospital.

She added that the hospital would provide service to any
health card holder as long as the person could produce
supporting documents such as an ID card, a family card and a
recommendation from a health center doctor.

Dr. Makmur Mandaria of the Tarakan hospital medical service
division, shared Nurul's statement, saying that his hospital was
obliged to serve all health card holders without asking how they
had obtained them.

Makmur said that so far the city health agency had no
mechanism to monitor whether health services were reaching the
right people.

He said the abuse of health facilities for the poor also
occurred at a hospital in Surabaya, East Java. But such practices
were stopped as the health agency in the city checked the
addresses of patients who received health services.

"If they found that a patients was not poor, the person would
be obliged to repay all of the hospital fees. Under such a
mechanism, they could cut the reimbursement by up to 50 percent.
Here, we do not have such a mechanism," Makmur told the Post.

Masulili said that his agency would issue a new type of health
card so that they could not easily be counterfeited. Unlike the
current health card, the new card will bear a photograph of the
holder.