Government plans to offer tax break in bid to cut public health bill
Extra incentive will be offered to families who take out private medical cover to counter rising cost of hospital care amid ageing population
Tax breaks will form the core of a government plan to cut spending from the swelling public hospitals budget and shift the burden to the private sector.
Government spending on the Hospital Authority has leapt 63 per cent to HK$44.4 billion in the 2013/14 financial year from HK$27.2 billion in 2006/07.
It is currently rising at about twice the pace of inflation.
Future expenditure could be even higher given the rapidly ageing population and an imbalance in the number of doctors in the private and public systems. About 40 per cent of doctors are in the public system and care for 90 per cent of hospital patients, while the other 60 per cent of doctors treat the remaining 10 per cent privately.
The government plan seeks to redress some of that balance.
Individuals who buy a health insurance package covering all dependents - including their spouse, children and parents - will get an extra tax deduction, a Food and Health Bureau spokesman told the Post.
"The measure [tax deduction] is effective and well-targeted in the sense that most of the taxpayers fall within the working population," he said.