Insured patients hit for part fees

HCM CITY — More than 90 per cent of insured patients will have to co-pay for check-ups and treatments, according to the new health insurance law that takes effect today.
Tong Thi Song Huong, director of the Ministry of Health’s Health Insurance Department, said patients with health insurance must pay part of the hospital fees, depending on the level or category of hospitals, and the kind of insurance policy bought.
Insured patients who are examined and treated in hospitals assigned under their policy must pay between 5 and 20 per cent of hospital fees. Those who use other hospitals must pay 30-70 per cent of the fees.
Cao Van Sang, head of HCM City’s Social Insurance Agency, said that retired officials, ethnic minorities, needy people and welfare recipients with poor health would pay 5 per cent of hospital fees.
Students, employees and others who are not obligated to buy health insurance will pay 20 per cent of the fee.
The nation’s health insurance fund will pay for children under six years old and people who have contributed to the revolution.
No co-payment will be required for examination fees that do not exceed VND97,500 (US$5.3).
Patients who received treatment and check-ups at hospitals in communes and wards would not be obligated to co-pay, Sang said.
Under the new health insurance law, insured people will be provided with health insurance cards with a new code.
Nguyen Minh Thao, head of the Viet Nam Social Insurance’s Health Insurance Evaluation Committee, said that nearly 50 million people nationwide currently bought health insurance.
For insured patients who are being treated during the printing period of the new cards, old insurance cards will still be effective until they are discharged from the hospital. For people who have not received new health insurance cards, social insurance agencies will provide a document that confirms the patient is waiting for a new card. Children without new cards will be allowed to use their birth certificates.
In HCM City, Sang said that new health insurance cards for retired officials would be sent to People’s Committees of their wards soon.
Most children under six years old and 1.1 million students in HCM City have received new health insurance cards. — VNS

Human traffickers sentenced for selling 86 women

Four people were sentenced to a total of 25 years in prison in the southern province of Tay Ninh on Wednesday for selling nearly 90 women to Singaporean and Malaysian bidders.
According to the indictment, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Yen, 53, was the trafficking ring’s mastermind.
Prosecutors said Yen hired 60- year-old Nguyen Thi Khuan to entice young women in Tay Ninh and other Mekong Delta provinces into leaving for foreign countries with the promise of jobs or marriages to wealthy men.
Yen would put the women up and teach them Malaysian before selling them to a Malaysian named Lee, who was introduced to Yen by her adopted daughter’s husband, another Malaysian, in 2007. The women were then bought by Malaysian and Singaporean men as wives.
Police investigations showed that Yen earned US$1,000 and paid Khuan VND2 million ($108) for each woman sold to Lee. She also paid Pham Thi Phi, 50, who helped her keep records of the women, VND500,000-1 million ($27-54) a month.
The ring was busted in November 2008 when Tay Ninh Police and the Criminal Investigation Bureau at the Ministry of Public Security caught Yen’s accomplices carrying out procedures for three women set to leave for Malaysia at Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat Airport.
According to police, Yen had earned VND76.5 million ($4,140) from selling 80 out of 400 women introduced by her accomplices since mid 2007.
Further investigations then found that Khuan also worked for another ring led by 31-year-old Nguyen The
Phong, who had sold six women to another Vietnamese also named Phong in Malaysia and his brother-in-law in Singapore since 2007. The Phong earned VND6 million ($324) for each woman sold to his partners.
Yen got 12 years’ imprisonment and The Phong was given seven while Khuan and Phi were sent to prison for four and two years respectively. They were all found guilty of human trafficking.
In a separate case, seven women, who were sold into prostitution in Thailand by Vietnamese citizen Vo Thi Hong, who was arrested in July 2009, returned to Vietnam last Friday.
The women, who were sent to Thailand eight months ago, were rescued by Vietnamese Embassy workers in Thailand in cooperation with other organizations and Thai investigators.
Reported by Phuc Nam

Obama summons intel chiefs for security talks

President Barack Obama on Thursday summoned U.S. intelligence chiefs to a meeting next week at the White House to discuss how to prevent a repeat of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25.
Seeking to quell criticism of his administration over an intelligence breakdown, Obama said he was briefed by his top advisers and would get assessments from intelligence agencies later on Thursday and study them over the weekend before returning to Washington from Hawaii.
Obama had ordered an immediate review of what he called "human and systemic failures" that allowed the accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian with alleged links to Islamic militants, to get on the transatlantic flight from Amsterdam.
The incident has put Obama on the defensive, drawing charges from Republicans that his administration has dropped the ball on counterterrorism and exposing intelligence gaps that have lingered on since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
While still on vacation with his family in Hawaii, Obama tried to reassure the U.S. public and grab control of what has become one of his toughest national security challenges since taking office last January.
"On Tuesday, in Washington, I will meet personally with relevant agency heads to discuss our ongoing reviews as well as security enhancements and intelligence-sharing improvements in our homeland security and counterterrorism operations," Obama said in a statement issued by the White House.
A preliminary report is expected to detail the intelligence lapses that allowed Abdulmutallab to board the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit on Christmas Day with what authorities said were explosives sewn into his clothes.
The Nigerian suspect flew from Africa to Amsterdam, where he boarded the Northwest flight to Detroit.
Obama, who took his children to a movie and played golf on Thursday, would study incoming reports on the issue throughout the evening, a senior administration official said.
Accountability for mistakes
The report is also likely to make recommendations on improving the sharing of information between the United States' 16 intelligence agencies.
Obama, a Democrat, is under pressure from opposition Republicans, who fault his administration for not preventing the attack and seek to paint him as weak on national security before mid-term elections in November, when they will challenge the Democrats' control of both houses of the U.S. Congress.
Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, said in a memo to staff that those who made mistakes in the incident would be held accountable.
"The president was direct in his assessment that intelligence failures were a contributing factor in the escalation of this threat. This is a tough message for us to receive," he said.
"In coming days we will review what information was available to whom, determine what mistakes were made in assessing or sharing that information, commend those who did their jobs well, and hold accountable those who did not.
"I have no doubt in our ability to close the gaps that these attacks exposed," Blair said.
There was also strong speculation about a possible shake-up at the top of the intelligence community, which had information from interviews and clandestine intercepts but did not put the pieces together.
Intelligence lapses in the incident have raised questions about sweeping changes made to improve security and intelligence-sharing after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
A senior aide said Obama would seek accountability at the highest levels. Another official said the review would show "where the dots should have been connected."
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will dispatch senior agency officials to meet with airport executives around the world to review security and technology used to screen passengers on U.S.-bound flights, the department said in a statement on Thursday.
Intelligence trail months old
U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said spy agencies picked up important information about Abdulmutallab, and about the intentions of al Qaeda leaders in Yemen, in the months before the attempted bombing.
The intelligence trail began at least four months ago, when the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted communications between al Qaeda leaders in Yemen discussing the possibility of using a "Nigerian" bomber, according to one official briefed on the intelligence.
The CIA first learned of Abdulmutallab in November, when his father came to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him, a spokesman said.
The agency said it then worked with the embassy to add Abdulmutallab and his possible Yemeni contacts to the U.S. terrorism database and forwarded biographical information about him to the National Counterterrorism Center.
Although worrying, a U.S. intelligence official said, the information the CIA received about Abdulmutallab was sketchy.
One U.S. counterterrorism official said there was reason to believe that Abdulmutallab had also come into contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American Muslim preacher linked to Nidal Malik Hasan, a military psychiatrist charged with 13 murders in a November shooting spree in a Texas Army base.
"People are looking at the precise nature of their interaction," the official said.
As authorities sought to piece together Abdulmutallab's movements, the Nigerian government said he began his journey in Ghana and spent less than 30 minutes in Nigeria's Lagos airport before boarding a flight to Amsterdam.
Although Abdulmutallab was known to have bought his ticket in Ghana's capital Accra, he had been thought to have started his journey on December 24 in Lagos, where he boarded a KLM flight to Amsterdam before transiting to the Detroit flight.
Source: Reuters