Physician proposes new health insurance system
Physician proposes new health insurance system
JAKARTA (JP): A top physician has called for the establishment
of a national health insurance system that would guarantee
affordable health care for everyone.
Azrul Azwar, the chairman of the Indonesian Medical
Association and dean of University of Indonesia's School of
Nursing, said the time had come to introduce a health insurance
law to ensure people's access to health care.
Existing health insurance schemes were limited to government
employees and some private sector workers and excluded the
millions of people who were self-employed, such as farmers,
fishermen and casual laborers, Azrul said in a scientific oration
for his professorship at the University of Indonesia on
Wednesday.
Community Health Care Insurance, a mutual fund program, only
covered some 31 million people, or 16 percent of the population,
he said.
They include 15 million civil servants and one million private
sector workers enrolled with Askes (the state-run health
insurance program), one million participants of Workers Social
Insurance, and 14 million participants of another health fund
program.
Some 169 million others still had to pay cash every time they
sought medical care, he said.
Azwar said the national health insurance scheme was even more
urgent now because medical costs kept on increasing due to
inflation, a growing public demand for better health services and
technological and scientific progress. Changing patterns of
disease in society also affected overall medical costs, he said.
To fund the national health insurance, he proposed that the
government raise land and property taxes by a few more percentage
points and use the proceeds to fund an agency, whether public or
private, to manage national health care.
He said if the proposal was agreed upon, the country could
immediately start a national health care program developed under
the principles of gotong royong (mutual help).
"Linking the premiums to property taxes guarantees
proportional contributions. The rich are bound to pay more than
the poor," he said.
"The scheme will work on the principle of cross-subsidies. The
rich helping the poor, and the healthy helping the sick," he
said. (09)