New health service fees at public hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City will be at least 80 percent of the maximum rates regulated by the Ministries of Health and Finance, local health authorities have said. Dinh Thi Lieu, head of the HCMC Health Department’s Finance and Accounting Office, made the statement during an interview with Tuoi Tre about the city’s health fees, which, like those in other localities, have been calculated based on references to the ceiling rates. The fees are also based on the city’s social and economic conditions, residential income, health insurance revenue, and budget, Lieu said. The fees will be divided into eight groups of subjects, including pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, traditional medicine, medical specialties, grade-1 general medicine, grade-2 general medicine, and grade-3 general medicine, and health stations. The city’s new fee rates, and a roadmap for applying them, will be submitted to the People’s Committee and People’s Council for consideration and approval in October. Under the roadmap, the fees will be increased to 80 percent of the ceiling in the near future, and the rate will be 100 percent by 2015. Asked how the new fees will affect poor and uninsured people, Lieu said the impacts on these groups would not be significant, since the city has supported them in paying health insurance premiums to insure them. In June, the Government also issued a decision to increase the rate of payment of the health insurance premium for near-poor people from 50 percent to 70 percent. The city has also set up a fund that is used to pay a part of the cost of medical examination and treatment for the poor, and last year the fund spent more than VND8 billion (US$384,000) on this purpose.