Limit on civil servants' health costs
The Comptroller-General's Department will strictly control the budget for medical reimbursement for civil servants, limiting the expenses for eight illnesses and for out-patient services after health costs surged to over Bt60 billion a year in recent year
“We have to do everything to keep this budget at Bt60 billion,” Apisama Charnseubsakul, a legal officer of the department, said yesterday.
In the last fiscal year, the government spent over Bt61 billion providing medical benefits for 1.5 million officials and some 3.5 million relatives at a cost of about Bt12,000 each. Most of the health budget went on expensive medicine and outpatient services.
This fiscal year, the government is allocating only Bt60 billion to support the civil servant medical benefit scheme.
On Thursday, a department regulation will go into effect to cease reimbursement for glucosamine sulphate, which is used to treat arthritis. The department found that there was no health benefit for patients taking this kind of drug.
For the 2013 fiscal year, the department will likely control the reimbursement of drugs for eight medical conditions including cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
It will also set a cap on out-patient visits and expenditure.
Currently, civil servants can access outpatient medical services as much as they want.
Some of them receive outpatient services more than 700 times a year or go to the hospital to pick up drugs more than three times a week. The Department of Special Investigation will be asked to probe these cases and retrieve the money from patients abusing the system.
