Anita Rachman – The National Social Security Law may have passed, but a troubling question lingers about the fate of the existing health insurance scheme and its beneficiaries.
Critics of the law, known as the BPJS, have been calling it "evil" because it would levy a charge on people, including those in the work force.
The critics say that many workers are currently covered for free by the public health insurance scheme Jamkesmas, and that once the new social security entity is established, those workers will need to pay.
Health Ministry official Usman Sumantri said the government, through Jamkesmas, this year covered 76.4 million people, many of them workers.
The BPJS law requires that all workers' insurance and pension schemes be managed under a single entity, also named the BPJS. Once the BPJS body is established, Usman said, Jamkesmas will be merged into it, with beneficiaries potentially eligible to receive further benefits.
"If there is a question of whether workers who currently receive support will still receive it later, the answer is that they might, but they might not," Usman said on Sunday.
He said the government would continue to support the poor and underprivileged, and some workers would also get benefits, because the law essentially mandates that workers and employers pay premiums, as is the current practice.
The Social Security Action Committee (KAJS), a supporter of the scheme, said on Sunday that it wanted the government to cover the premiums of at least the 30 million outsourced and permanent workers nationwide whose monthly salary is less than Rp 1 million ($112).
KAJS has been pressing the government to speed up the drafting of the presidential and government regulations needed to implement the recently passed law. It said that BPJS could not be properly implemented without the supporting regulations, including detailed regulations on beneficiaries.
Said Iqbal, secretary general of the KAJS, said that 65 percent of the lowly paid 30 million workers it mentioned were not even obliged to pay taxes because they earned so little. "They should receive support from the government for health security," he said.
This commitment is important across the board, but especially for outsourced workers because they could lose their job at any time, he said.
"While they are employed, their employers are responsible for them. But once they are unemployed, the government should step in," he said. He said that workers were often not covered by Jamkesmas, particularly those already covered by state-owned insurance company Jamsostek.
Said said KAJS, which has about two million members, did not reject the premium scheme. He said members understood they should pay for benefits. "We hope that the amount will stay the same as it is today, and that workers and employers pay them [the premiums]. We will object if the government raises the amount," he said.
Sofjan Wanandi, chairman of the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo), has said that contributions by businesses to the new scheme should not rise. Companies already cover 20 percent to 30 percent of all employee insurance premiums – health, work accidents, life and pensions, he said.
Under the new law, a BPJS will be formed on Jan. 1, 2014, to provide health insurance to all people, while by July 2015, a second BPJS will provide work, accident and life insurance as well as a pension scheme.