Life is Healthy

Kevin Haydon, the CEO of global sales and service at Philips Healthcare, said that while there was growing awareness about the urgent need for healthcare among countries in the ASEAN region, this tendency also produced the challenge of growing demand.

Despite the general problem of increasing demand for quality healthcare, there are also specific problems experienced by ASEAN countries, which have different financial structures or market characteristics.

“In the case of developed economies, the biggest health challenges are chronic diseases and the fact that the population is living longer. As you get older, you end up with more chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer, which are typically more expensive to manage,” Haydon said.

While countries with developed economies strive for ways to ensure that better quality healthcare is still affordable, those with emerging markets are still struggling with basic issues of access.

“In many emerging economies, despite increasing affluence, urbanization and improved healthcare, there is still a serious challenge of ensuring access to healthcare — especially for the millions of urban and rural poor,” Haydon said in his speech during the event.

Nova said there had not been any moves for direct cooperation between Indonesia or any other ASEAN countries, such as Thailand and the Philippines.

The Indonesian government is currently drafting a bill on a social insurance management agency. The bill is expected to provide a legal basis for an agency that will manage the national security system, in which all Indonesians will have primary healthcare insurance.

Earlier this week, lawmaker, Surya Chandra Surapaty, said the House of Representatives was hoping to submit the draft to the President on June 16.

Nova said that should the country manage to pass the bill this year, it might establish itself as a model for other countries in the region.

However, she added that some suggestions revealed the hope in establishing a universal healthcare system in which the rich helped the poor and the well helped the ill was “very ambitious”.

“We [legislators] are discussing whether this bill will be feasible,” she said.

Nova raised several issues, such as whether the state should also cover secondary or tertiary healthcare and whether the state should apply taxes to ensure feasibility.

“Thailand mentioned that at first the system of paying 30 baht granted primary health care, but then [the problem] spread further into the secondary and tertiary. Nowadays, there are many diseases related to lifestyle and climate change,” she said.

On a more optimistic note, Nova said that she would propose including mental illnesses in the draft of the new bill.