The Public Health Ministry has decided to shift a large sum of money from the third-party insurance fund set up to compensate road-accident victims - which has been the subject of widespread complaints - into the universal health scheme.

The move aims to resolve financial problems plaguing the scheme.

A committee led by leading economist Ammar Siamwalla concluded that this was one of a few possible ways to inject significant money into the scheme, the Public Health Minister said.

To implement this idea, the ministry planned to amend the Road Accident Victim Protection Act of 1997, the minister, Mongkol na Songkhla, said. The amendment aims to pool revenue obtained from mandatory insurance premiums from car and motorbike owners at the National Health Security Office (NHSO), which manages the universal health scheme, he said.

The amendment proposal was expected to be submitted to the Cabinet very soon, Mongkol said.

Department of Insurance figures showed that income collected from third-party insurance from car and motorbike owners had increased steadily from about Bt6.4 billion in 1999 to Bt8.1 billion in 2004. However, only about half the total income was used to compensate road crash victims, while the other half went to insurance firms, which made huge annual profits of up to Bt1.3 billion, according to the Foundation for Consumers. The accumulated profits made by insurance companies from 1999 to 2004 stood at Bt4.36 billion, according to the Foundation.

Last year, the consumer group conducted a survey on 666 people insured under the road victim protection scheme in 42 provinces. The poll found that 99.6 per cent of respondents - people in all regions - had problems claiming financial compensation, as they had the right to do.

As a result, many road accident victims had given up and sought medical assistance instead under the universal health scheme, Social Security scheme and the medical welfare scheme for civil servants. Thus, the financial burden from road accidents had shifted to state schemes, the survey showed.

Another solution the committee was considering was letting patients financially capable of paying part of the cost of their treatment, do so, under the universal health scheme.

However, this option had yet to be finalised, as the committee had yet to consider details of who should pay for health services and how much they should be liable for, the minister said.

Another idea was that Thais flying overseas might be charged a departure tax of about Bt100 per trip, to raise further revenue. This idea was also being studied for future consideration by the committee.

The taxation measure proposed by Ammar was believed to be an effective way to find money to fund the health scheme, but Mongkol said it was not appropriate to initiate it at this time and it remained unapproved.

The universal health scheme has suffered from insufficient funds since it was implemented six years ago. Recently the government broke patents and issued compulsory licences for two expensive Aids drugs and one heart-disease drug. The health scheme was not able to cover the cost of these life-saving treatments.

Arthit Khwankhom

The Nation