Why a Human Rights Study Centre Is Urgently Needed: When Policy Is Made Without Listening

Jakarta (ANTARA) – On 1 February 2026, around 11 million recipients of the National Health Insurance (JKN) Contribution Assistance scheme (PBI) were suddenly deactivated. The move was a direct consequence of a policy to update and reconcile social assistance recipient data through the National Single Social and Economic Data system (DTSEN).

The aim was sound: to update the data so that contribution assistance would reach the people who genuinely live in poverty. The problem, however, was that BPJS Kesehatan only received the official documents a few days before the regulation took effect. Participants were notified even later. Many only discovered that their coverage was inactive when they were already standing at a hospital registration desk.

The impact was immediate. The Indonesian Dialysis Patients Community reported that at least 160 people with kidney failure were unable to receive treatment, despite needing dialysis two or three times a week.

The Ministry of Health and BPJS Kesehatan estimated that around 120,000 participants with serious illnesses were also affected.

On 9 February, the government and the House of Representatives finally agreed to reactivate participants’ coverage automatically for three months. The correction is worth noting, but it came after people raised their voices, rather than before the rules took effect.

This problem cannot be attributed solely to missing or inaccurate data. The more urgent question is: when the data is wrong, who bears the consequences?

Wrongly removing someone who is entitled to assistance has far graver consequences than mistakenly including someone who is not—especially for patients whose treatment must not be interrupted.

The role of a Human Rights Study Centre