My Take | Health care: you get what you pay for
- Until we have mandatory health care contributions and raise people’s wages to pay the premiums, government insurance scheme won’t work
The scheme, which is tax-deductible up to HK$8,000, aims to ease overcrowding at public hospitals by encouraging more patients to switch to the private health sector. But just because you have coverage doesn’t mean you will go to a private hospital rather than a public one.
The latest survey by the Consumer Council merely confirms that: 43 per cent of Hong Kong people with private insurance still enter public hospitals as inpatients. But why should that be when more and more people buy their own health insurance, even before the government scheme was launched in March?
For example, government figures – cited in a separate study by the Legislative Council’s research arm – showed people with private insurance jumped 78 per cent from 2006 to 2016, or 1.35 million people to 2.4 million.
The Consumer Council claims that people lack confidence in private insurance for health care protection. It also warns that this lack of confidence will not only “be detrimental to individual consumer interest, but also limit the potential of leveraging the private insurance market to finance the health care system in Hong Kong, as well as limiting the potential of the private sectors to meet the rising demand [for] health care services.”
But it’s hard to see how such problems could be solved. Consider the per capita policy premium in Hong Kong, which has remained woefully low.