Country awash with bogus health insurance The Viet Nam Social Insurance Agency (VSIA) has discovered that over 800,000 health insurance cards in 43 provinces and cities nationwide from 2010 to 2012 were wrongfully issued.    The Viet Nam Social Insurance Agency (VSIA) has discovered that over 800,000 health insurance cards in 43 provinces and cities nationwide from 2010 to 2012 were wrongfully issued.-Photo baodongnai The agency found out that in some cases individuals had been provided with three or four health insurance cards in a number of provinces, including Thua Thien Hue, Son La, Lai Chau, Vinh Phuc, Dong Thap, HCM City and Ha Noi. The duplicate cards were provided free to children under-six, the elderly, people who contributed to the revolution and the families of soldiers and police officers. The deputy director for the Thua Thien Hue Social Insurance Agency, Nguyen Truc Phuong, spoke to the Nong thon Ngay nay (Countryside Today) newspaper, saying that more than 25,500 duplicate health insurance cards were issued in the central province during the period 2010-12. "Of the figure, more than 17,800 people had two cards, 539 three cards and 65 with four cards. Some people even had up to six health insurance cards," he elaborated. Phuong said that this situation had come about because of weak management at grassroots level, while there were too many agencies and organisations in charge of drawing up the lists of beneficiaries. He added that the province is checking the number of children and elderly people so that they can be provided new health insurance cards. The province will meet with other organisations and agencies next week to hammer out shortcoming in the system. Nguyen Manh Tuan, from the Cao Bang Social Insurance Agency said that the northern mountain province had provided around 3,000-4,000 duplicate cards, mainly for ethnic and minority people. He explained that the situation has occurred due to the lifestyles of ethnic and minority people as they are scattered across remote areas that makes it difficult for the local authorities to list the number of people and check them out. VSIA's Deputy Director Nguyen Minh Thao said that many of the duplicate health insurance cards had been handed out by irresponsible agencies. He added that the duplicate cards had resulted in losses to the State Budget and that his agency would check every case and demand refunds be made to the State Budget. To deal with this problem, the insurance and health sectors say they will now apply information technology to the health insurance field. However, they said that each person must be given an identification number to avoid more than one card being issued to an individual person. The head of VSIA's Social Insurance Policies Implementation Department Pham Luong Son said that the draft of the revised Health Insurance Law proposes that if people register for health insurance services in family groups, they will require confirmation from the communal or ward People's Committee. Source: VNS