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ompanies will see costs balloon from additional healthcare schemes for benefits not covered by and on top of the national health insurance (JKN) program, as they want to maintain the quality of health care provided to their employees, a business group says.

The Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) said some firms would likely want to avoid conflict with employees, who fear their healthcare benefits would be downgraded as the infrastructure for the and Social Security Managament Agency for Health (BPJS Kesehatan), which provides the JKN program, remains poor with complaints ranging from long lines to insufficient doctors and health centers during the first year of its operation this year.

According to Apindo, companies choosing to go down this path and take advantage of the agency'€™s coordination of benefit (COB) plan, in which firms could top up services not covered by the agency, would likely run into technical problems with claims.

'€œWe are risking double payments [on health insurance premiums]. We don'€™t want to start a fight with our own employees,'€ Apindo chairman Hariyadi Sukamdani said.

BPJS Kesehatan previously offered companies unsatisfied with the services its COB plan, either using a direct company benefits system or through more than 30 private insurance firms that BPJS Kesehatan had partnered with.

Furthermore, Hariyadi said that employees were reluctant to revert to the erstwhile BPJS Kesehatan scheme requiring them to be referred by low-level health facilities to get treatment at participating hospitals. '€œThis leads to tedious administrative work that will amount to a loss of productive time,'€ he added.

As previously reported, Apindo has asked the government to delay implementation of BPJS Kesehatan from the beginning of 2015 to 2017 for state-owned, small, medium and large enterprises. To this end, Hariyadi said that the industry group urged President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo to revise Presidential Regulation No. 111/2013 on the JKN, citing the agency'€™s lack of preparation.

The presidential regulation was issued to achieve the goal of universal healthcare by 2019, requiring all employers to enroll their employees by Jan. 1, 2015 at the latest, with a premium rate of 5 percent of employee salary.

Apindo suspects foul play leading up to the passing of the law, as it was signed by former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Dec. 27, 2013, only a few days ahead of the nationwide implementation of the BPJS Kesehatan program. '€œWe don'€™t know who'€™s pulling strings here, because the original agreement with stakeholders was to start in January 2017,'€ Hariyadi said.

Additionally, Hariyadi demanded that work-related accidents also be added to the benefits list, as companies had already fulfilled their premium payments.

He also suggested that employers'€™ in-house clinics be included as first point-of-reference for health care, as many companies had a reimbursement system or a special budget for health care.

Around 131.3 million people are entitled to BPJS Kesehatan benefits from 9,778 community health clinics, 3,000 clinics and 3,786 individual doctors, according to data from BPJS Kesehatan'€™s website on Nov. 21.

BPJS Kesehatan spokesman Ikhsan told The Jakarta Post that double payments would not happen if companies carefully calculated what was covered by the agency and what was not.

'€œWe allow companies, if they want, to top up [the healthcare benefits not covered by BPJS Kesehatan],'€ Ikhsan said recently. '€œThe principle of COB is that BPJS will pay for health care that it covers, and any additional would be provided by the companies either through insurance or company cash.'€

BPJS Kesehatan will disseminate details of its coverage and schemes with businesses before year-end, Ikhsan said, acknowledging the current lack of information for companies.

'€” Esther Samboh
contributed to this story