General Director of Viet Nam Social Security Nguyen The Manh said at the meeting of the sector held in early March to assess the results achieved in the first two months of this year and set targets for the coming months, that the insurance sector has continued facing many challenges this year due to the pandemic’s complicated developments.

During the pandemic, the poor are more aware of the role of social and health insurance policies in their lives, he said.

Therefore, they are the group of people that the insurance sector should pay more attention to in order to develop household health insurance and voluntary social insurance, he said.

The target that Viet Nam Social Security set is to deploy groups of solutions to increase participants in the next months, he said.

Besides, the sector should quickly collect the debts of social and health insurance that employers delayed to pay their labourers and not allow any new debts of social and health insurance to be incurred, he said.

The sector was told to work with relevant ministries and sectors to conduct random inspections at enterprises and units that delayed payments of social and health insurance for their employees or allegedly showed signs of abusing social and health insurance funds, he said.

General Director of Viet Nam Social Security Nguyen The Manh said at the meeting

It was also ordered to renew services to better serve beneficiaries, make payments for social and health insurance through public services and promote non-cash payment under the direction of the Government, he added.

The sector had to strictly manage the payment of short-term social insurance, lump-sum subsidies and unemployment benefits as well as strengthen measures to control medical expenses covered by health insurance in medical facilities, he said.

Moreover, the sector was tasked to co-operate with press agencies to implement communication plans related to social and health insurance; instruct people and businesses to install the VssID application and disseminate the meaning of social and health-insurance policies during the pandemic, he said.

It should continue simplifying administrative procedures, expanding the provision of online public services, integrating more public services of the sector into the National Public Service Portal under the guidance of the Government Office, sharing data with relevant ministries and agencies as well as perfecting the VssID application, he said.

Assessments

Also at the meeting, chaired by Manh, achievements of the sector during the first two months of this year were revealed.

By the end of February 28, there were an additional 98,037 people participating in social insurance, bringing the total number of participants to 16.03 million in the country (accounting for 32.27 per cent of working-age people).

An additional 1.4 million people reportedly participated in health insurance, bringing the total number of participants to 86.5 million. Some 47,268 people participated in voluntary social insurance, bringing the total number of people participating in voluntary social insurance to 26.67 per cent of working-age people.

As planned, the sector needs an additional of 1.6 million people participating in social insurance, more than 847,000 people participating in unemployment insurance and over 1.88 million participating in health insurance by the end of this year.

To implement the targets, all units of the sector in 63 provinces and cities should focus on some major solutions, including reviewing and classifying groups to develop the number of participants.

Statistics of the sector showed that currently, the total amount of debt of social, unemployment and health insurance is about VNĐ26.5 trillion (US$1.1 billion).

Viet Nam Social Security will work with the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to improve regulations on collecting debts of social, unemployment and health insurance and propose solutions to collect debts of social, unemployment and health insurance in bankrupt businesses.

Le Van Phuc, head of the Health Insurance Policy Implementation Department, said health insurance participants still received examination and treatment even as the pandemic hit the country. Due to the pandemic, the payments, covered by the health insurance, for health insurance participants in the first two months of this year only decreased by 4 per cent compared to the same period last year. 

In the first two months of this year, Viet Nam Social Security’s Communication Centre has worked with Viet Nam Television’s VTV8 channel to broadcast communication products for the VssID application and “An sinh cuoc song” (Social Security for Life) television programme on VTV1.

It also coordinated with the Nong Nghiep Viet Nam (Vietnamese Agriculture) newspaper to organise a seminar with the topic "The role of unemployment insurance in the implementation of the State's supporting policies" as well as published nearly 1,000 news articles on the implementation of social and health-insurance policies on mass media./.