30-baht scheme needs attention

If we are to listen to what the National Health Security Office (NHSO) has told us, everything has been running smoothly with the universal healthcare programme, better known as the 30-baht scheme.

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What about reports that member hospitals are facing mounting debt? That is just a “routine budget adjustment”. Partnered clinics are closing down? That is, the NHSO claims, because of their failures to comply with the rules.

Indeed, the official prospects of the 30-baht scheme appear so rosy that the newly-appointed Public Health Minister, Pattana Promphat, promised to improve the free kidney dialysis treatment for more than 100,000 patients nationwide within the next two months, following a directive by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul.

The problem, however, is people who rely on the 30-baht “gold card” scheme — along with its partnered clinics and hospitals — see a different reality. On social media platforms, complaints abound from gold card members who must travel farther to newly-assigned clinics after their original ones either closed or substantially curtailed services due to a lack of funding.

A similar scenario is unfolding among partnered hospitals, some of which claim to have operated in the red for so long they have been forced to stop taking referrals. In these cases, the burden falls directly on patients who depend on the welfare scheme and are apparently left to fend for themselves.