Towards health insurance coverage for students

In recent years, the compulsory health insurance policy for pupils and students has proven its practical value, with many children with serious illnesses having had hundreds of millions of dong, even billions of dong, paid for treatment by the health insurance fund, helping their families reduce their financial burden.

Identifying the education sector, especially the school system at all levels, as playing a key role in caring for and protecting the health of students, in recent years, Nguyen Du Secondary School (Buon Ho Ward) has always focused on promoting and mobilizing parents to buy health insurance cards for students. With the motto "slow and steady wins the race", school staff and teachers regularly promote at flag-raising ceremonies, parent meetings and through Zalo groups of classes. In addition, the school also closely coordinates with medical facilities and social insurance agencies to ensure the rights of students when examining and treating health insurance. Thanks to that, parents' awareness has been increasingly improved, and over the past many years, the rate of students participating in health insurance at the school has always reached 100%.

Medical staff of Nguyen Du Secondary School (Buon Ho Ward) take care of students' health.

Mr. Huynh Tan Minh, Principal of Nguyen Du Secondary School, shared: “In the 2025-2026 school year, the school has 682 students. With the goal of continuing to mobilize 100% of students to participate in health insurance, the school's Board of Directors has developed a plan to collect health insurance for students and deploy it to all staff and teachers in the school. Accordingly, the school pays special attention to improving propaganda skills for staff, teachers and employees so that each teacher can become a good and dedicated propagandist. As for students in especially difficult circumstances, the school will call for support resources from organizations and businesses to support funding to buy health insurance cards for them.”

With the new policy of the State supporting the health insurance premium for students to increase up to 50%, it is hoped that it will be a motivation and a lever for every student to be able to participate in health insurance, receive primary health care as well as prevent risks, and share the financial burden with their families when they unfortunately contract diseases that require high treatment costs.

Previously, many officials, teachers, and schools believed that mobilizing students to participate in health insurance was the task of the Social Insurance sector, so they only "conveniently" informed parents during parent meetings so that any student who wanted to participate could participate. However, in recent years, the development of health insurance for students has been assigned to officials, teachers, and schools; at the same time, it has become a competition criterion during the school year. Since then, when the team of managers and teachers changed their views on the responsibility of developing health insurance for students, mobilizing students to participate in health insurance has been carried out in a more systematic and effective manner.

However, in reality, in some schools, especially in remote areas and ethnic minority areas, student health insurance coverage still faces many difficulties. For example, at Ea Bong Primary School (Ea Na commune), in recent years, the school's health insurance participation rate has often only reached about 90%. According to Mr. Bui Van Huan, Vice Principal of the school, over 80% of the students are ethnic minorities; in which, in addition to students from 3 hamlets in particularly difficult circumstances who are granted health insurance cards by the State, students in the remaining 2 hamlets and hamlets have less well-off families, so it is very difficult to mobilize parents to participate in health insurance for their children. Although the school has mobilized resources to support the cost of buying health insurance cards for students in particularly difficult circumstances, it is still unable to ensure a 100% participation rate.

Ea Bong Primary School teachers inform students about health insurance participation in the new school year 2025 - 2026.

According to statistics from the provincial Social Insurance, in the 2024-2025 school year, the whole province has 603,930 students, of which 375,290 are required to participate in health insurance at school. By the end of the school year, along with students who are supported by the State, 364,478 students have participated in health insurance at school; the rate of students participating in health insurance in the province reached 98.21%.

Thus, last school year, the whole province still had 10,812 students who had not participated in health insurance; in addition to the reason that some people's lives were still difficult, awareness of health insurance policies in general and health insurance for students in particular was still limited; many families still considered this a voluntary policy and only participated when they were sick...

In the new school year 2025 - 2026, the whole Dak Lak province has more than 700,000 pupils and thousands of students. To achieve the goal of 100% of pupils and students in the whole province participating in health insurance, in addition to the efforts of the provincial Social Insurance sector and school officials and teachers, it is necessary to have the joint participation and coordination of relevant sectors in the localities.

Source: https://baodaklak.vn/xa-hoi/chinh-sach-xa-hoi/202509/huong-den-bao-phu-bao-hiem-y-te-hoc-sinh-sinh-vien-d37172a/