The board of the National Health Security Office (NHSO) has its fingers crossed that an urgent request for 2.5 billion baht in extra funding to cover the health care benefits of employees of local administrative organisations will be approved.
The fund was in the red last year and its credit balance continues to remain negative.
The Department of Local Administration (DLA), which supports the work of local administrative organisations nationwide, as well as the NHSO and 12 local administrative associations are preparing information to support their joint request for a bigger budget, said Public Health Minister Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, in his capacity as chairman of the NHSO's board.
He was speaking after a meeting of the board to discuss the progress of the budget request.
In 2012, several local administrative associations (LAO) shared the problem of their employees encountering difficulties in gaining access to health care benefits due to the technical problems of the old central health-care budget management system. In response, the government ordered budget management to come under the care of the NHSO.
The new fund was then set up to cover the costs of the health care services provided to those LAO employees nationwide.
Many LAO employees have gained better access to the health care services covered by the fund.
But the fund receives a fixed amount of money from the government, resulting in it not being able to meet its financial commitments.
That has prompted the DLA, the NHSO and the 12 associations to come up with a short-term measure to deal with the negative numbers.
They did this by requesting around mid-June an extra budget of 2.5 billion baht for fiscal year 2017 (between October 2016 and September 2017).
For the 2018 fiscal year the three parties aim to request an extra budget of 3 billion baht, which they say is required to cover the extra health care costs of the local administrative associations, said Dr Piyasakol.
The request will be brought up for discussion with the government's committee on decentralisation on Thursday, Dr Piyasakol said.
