05-Mar-17 Indonesia’s healthcare insurance scheme is struggling to gain traction. Poor services at public hospitals and the difficulty of accessing care across the vast archipelago are factors, but abuse of the scheme by hospitals and fraud by users are also to blame. The number of people benefiting from the scheme may be less than official figures claim. [image: FT Confidentail Research]

08-Feb-17 Vietnam plans to issue electronic health security cards to its citizens verifying their right to medical services. The push to digitize the system is aimed at seamless healthcare delivery and insurance across the country. Electronic healthcare registries in all 63 cities and provinces will be synced together so that insurance plans will have to accept all cardholders. [image: VN Express / Dang Phuong Lan]

01-Mar-17 Japan's national health insurance logged a deficit of JPY284 bn yen (USD2.5 bn) in 2015 as an injection of public funds failed to compensate for rising costs stemming from an aging subscriber pool and pricey new treatments. The main culprit was a rise in benefit payments, which grew 2.1%. High-priced hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni also played a role. [image: Nikkei Asian Reveiw]

15-Feb-17 Medical insurers are seeing a surge in demand for private insurance that offers cross-border health cover. This market is growing by 15-25% per year, and could be worth as much as USD144 bn globally. The challenge for the insurance industry is identifying who might need a policy that covers international travel for medical treatment, and why. [image: AXA PPP International]

20-Jan-17 Poor spending on healthcare is a major concern in India, where most cannot afford private healthcare. India ranks abysmally low on public healthcare expenditure. The objective laid out in the National Health Policy to increase expenditure 1.04 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2020, with 70 per cent for primary care, has been a welcome step. [image: Business Standard]