38,000 students left out of medical insurance service

HÀ TĨNH — The social insurance agency in the central province of Hà Tĩnh has revealed that some 38,000 students in the province have not registered for the school medical insurance service.

The agency said 53,240 students of the total 91,044 students in schools around the province had registered for medical insurance, a compulsory healthcare policy for students.

The rest, nearly 38,000 students, have not registered yet.

That means they will be excluded from healthcare programmes that the agency has designated for school students and they will have to pay high fees for using public health services. The situation also leads to reluctance during health check-ups when these students get into problems, affecting their studies in general.

A report by local Hà Tĩnh newspaper said no students had registered for the service in some schools in the districts of Thạch Hà, Can Lộc and Hương Khê.

An agency’s official blamed the cause on poverty among these student communities. Many of the students’ parents are rice farmers, fishermen and salt farmers with a low income and cannot afford to buy the insurance service.

A package for an entire year costs each student VNĐ640,000 (US$28).

The province has issued a policy to subsidise 20 per cent of the insurance package for underprivileged students, but healthcare centres in the communities have delayed statistics work in making a list of eligible students, partly causing thousands of students be uncovered by health insurance. — LV