T

he Health Ministry will continue to use 2008's figure number of 76.4 million poor people as the basis for the amount of recipients for the Community Health Insurance (Jamkesmas) in 2010 although there are only reportedly 60.13 million poor this year.

The ministry's Jamkesmas Center head Chalik Masulili said he used the 2008 data because only 30 to 40 percent of the new data matched with the existing recipients.

"We will keep the old recipients while updating all of the data this year," he told The Jakarta Post last Thursday.

Chalik admitted this demonstrated the poor quality of the data presented by the government.

He said the ministry and the National Statistics Agency (BPS) would conduct house-to-house checks to consolidate and update both data sets.

The ministry has allocated Rp 5.125 trillion (US$542 million) for Jamkesmas in 2010 compared to Rp 4.6 trillion in 2009.

Chalik said the increased budget was to cover the planned coverage expansion of Jamkesmas.

In addition to the current recipients, Jamkesmas will also cover new types of recipients including orphans, natural disaster victims, neglected elderly and inmates.

These new types of recipients are not yet included in the existing list of recipients.

Jamkesmas is a government-run health insurance scheme designed in 2008 for poor families to replace the previous scheme, the Poor Health Insurance (Askeskin), which was run by state health insurance company PT Askes in 2007.

Those who are registered in the Jamkesmas program receive cards that can be used to exempt them from medical costs at hospitals and public health centers.

The Health Ministry disburses the fund directly to the hospitals and the centers.

The card issuance for new recipients and the updating of recipients database are two targets of the ministry during the first 100 days of President Susilo Bambang Yudho-yono's second administration.

The government took over the scheme's management from PT Askes as it suffered from a deficit of Rp 1.2 trillion in 2007.

In 2008, the Jamkesmas Center managed Rp 4.6 trillion, which was used to finance the scheme and the debts the previous scheme owed to hospitals and PT Askes.

The government used Rp 1.2 trillion from the 2008 health insurance budget to cover the deficit in the 2007 budget for Askeskin.

Out of the remaining Rp 3.4 trillion in 2008, only about Rp 2.4 trillion was disbursed to hospitals and health centers to pay health expenses for the poor.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Endang Sedyaningsih Rahayu said the expansion of the insurance scheme would mark the government's efforts to provide health insurance for all citizens.

"We will expand this scheme and would run it outside the Health Ministry in the future," she said.

She said according to the 2004 National Social Security Law, non-profit institutions should run health care insurance in the country.

She said the government tried to establish these institutions, which can be public or private entities, as soon as possible.

Chalik said the ministry was waiting for the National Social Insurance Council (DJSN) to issue necessary regulations to accelerate these institutions' establishment.

DJSN is a multi-partite organization that has the authority to issue policies in order to synchronize various social insurances in Indonesia.