Health insurance in Viet Nam towards universal coverage: The case of the workers of informal sector

In 2009, health insurance was expanded to 58.4% of the population, demonstrating the efforts of the Government to expand the provision of health care. However, extending the coverage of health insurance to the remaining 41.6% of the population, or 35.7 million people, is a challenging task. First of all, even those individuals whose participation is subsidized appear reluctant to join the scheme. Secondly, those who are not insured predominantly work in the informal sector and are hard to track. Understanding and eliminating the obstacles that explain the unwillingness to participate in health insurance should therefore be part of any strategy to improve health insurance coverage. Understanding these obstacles is at the heart of this brief, and the study which underpins it, which focuses on workers in the informal sector and their family members.