At the ongoing session of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Council, municipal local People’s Committee withdrew its proposal on increasing medical service fees at State-owned hospitals from August 1, to avoid putting pressure on the people. However, at the People’s Council’s 10th session that opened on Tuesday, July 10, deputies still are expected to discuss the proposed 1.49-fold increase in medical fees. They are also scheduled to discuss another proposal to raise existing tuition fees by 3-4 times.   Explaining why it revoked the proposal related to hospital fees, People’s Committee deputy chairman Hua Ngoc Thuan told Tuoi Tre that if both price hike plans are approved and applied at the same time, they will put a heavy pressure on people’s lives. Therefore, the committee is of the opinion that medical service fees should be proposed for an increase from next year instead of August 1, Thuan said. With the same view, Nguyen Thi Quyet Tam, chairwoman of the People’s Council, said that both hospital fees and tuition fees have big impacts on the public, so if both the fees increase at the same time, they will create a burden on a large part of the city’s population.   With such a decision, the city has become the only one locality in the country to refuse to increase hospital fees this year. Currently, more than 60 provinces and cities have adopted their own medical services fees that are calculated based on the maximum rates stipulated in Joint Circular 04/2012 of the Ministries of Finance and Health which took effect on April 14, 2012. Most of these localities have applied new fees that are about 80 percent of the ceiling rates.

In late June, the Hanoi People’s Committee asked its local People’s Council to approve higher fees for 819 health services at all state-owned hospitals in the capital from August 1. Hanoi authorities proposed that the capital’s new health fees be 70 percent of the ministry’s ceilings from August 2013, and 100 percent from 2016.