Law Amending and Supplementing Several Articles of the Health Insurance Law No. 46/2014/QH13

Law 46/2014/QH13, passed by the National Assembly, amends and supplements several articles of the Health Insurance Law 25/2008/QH12. It restructures who must participate, how contributions are based, and how benefits scale, and it is a foundational reference for health insurance contribution calculations on take-home pay. The Law confirms that health insurance is a compulsory, not-for-profit scheme organized by the State. It introduces household-based participation, defining a participating household as everyone listed in the household registration or temporary residence book, and adds the concept of a basic medical service package paid for by the health insurance fund. On the contribution base, the Law provides that the health insurance contribution is set as a percentage of the wage used as the basis for compulsory social insurance under the Social Insurance Law (referred to as the monthly wage), or of the pension, allowance, or the statutory base salary, depending on the group. The benefit level depends on the severity of illness, the beneficiary group, the scope of entitlements, and the length of health insurance participation. The amended Article 12 reorganizes participants into clearly defined groups by who pays: (1) groups jointly paid by employee and employer, covering employees on indefinite-term contracts or fixed-term contracts of at least three months, salaried enterprise managers, officials and civil servants, and non-specialized commune-level activists; (2) groups paid by the social insurance agency, covering pensioners, recipients of monthly working-capacity-loss allowances, people on monthly social insurance allowances for labour accidents, occupational disease or long-term illness, those aged 80 and over on monthly survivor allowances, retired commune officials on monthly social insurance allowances, and unemployment-allowance recipients; (3) groups paid by the State budget, covering active military and police personnel, cipher staff, retired commune officials on budget-funded allowances, people with revolutionary merit and war veterans, serving National Assembly and People's Council deputies, children under six, monthly social-protection recipients, the poor, ethnic minorities in difficult areas, island residents, and relatives of merit holders; (4) groups with State-budget subsidized contributions, covering near-poor households and pupils and students; and (5) household participants comprising everyone not already in groups 1 through 4. The Law also adds Articles 7a, 7b, and 7c assigning responsibilities to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Training, and the Ministries of National Defence and Public Security for identifying, managing, and listing their respective insured groups. For payroll-related calculations, the key parameters are the percentage-of-wage contribution base tied to the compulsory social insurance wage and the group-based, tenure-sensitive benefit levels.