More than 500,000 local officials will benefit from a new healthcare scheme, Public Health Minister Pradit Sinthawanarong said after a meeting with relevant agencies yesterday.
Dr Winai Sawasdivorn, secretary-general of the National Health Security Office (NHSO), said: "The meeting proposed to use what it called the 'Bt30 Plus' healthcare scheme, which will offer more benefits than the Bt30 health scheme offered to most Thais.
"The Bt30 Plus scheme may cover [having] a special room, special nurses and assisted reproduction fees. It will also include parents, spouses and children of those officials."
Pradit said: "We will discuss more about the benefits of this scheme but they won't be different from civil servants' welfare. We expect that the benefit issue will be concluded in January next year. Then, relevant agencies will sign a memorandum of understanding.
"The Department of Local Administration will separate around Bt5 billion-Bt6.5 billion, or about 1 per cent of the total budget allocated to local administrative organisations across the nation, to run the scheme, and the NHSO will manage the amount," he said.
Winai said the scheme would have a Bt9,900 budget per person while the budget for civil servants' healthcare was Bt12,000 per head.
Meanwhile, a representative of local administrative officials said they agreed their scheme's benefits should not be less than the civil servants' scheme, but they did not agree with the Bt30 Plus proposal.
Source: The Nation December 20, 2012
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