Abstract
The aims of this study were: First, to review the experience of health insurance management for non-Thai including migrant workers, refugees, stateless and people with citizenship problems. Second, to explore the organization of health insurance and benefit sets for non-Thai living in Thailand. Giving highlights on problems, obstacles, and the direction of future development in both general cases and C188 Case. Third, a synthesis of alternative forms and reforming the public and health insurance systems to cover to those people. Qualitative research has been applied along with documentary survey, in-depth interviews with semi-structured, and focus group to collect and analysis the data. The results indicated that the major problems for health insurance management for non-Thai derived from structural problem, politics and attitude. The structural problem caused by the identifying status inequitably of non-Thai. And the lack of national regulations to unite the status of non-Thai and health insurance legally, leading to the work fragmentation with no “authority” from central coordination to supervise. Besides, the status of non-Thai has been considering at the dimensions of nation state rather than an “individual”. Consequently, there is imbalance between security issues and human rights. This research has suggested 4 alternative policies to create sustainable health coverage for non-Thai citizen as follows: 1) Discontinuing health insurance system provided by Ministry of Public Health. All non-Thai must register to the social security system. 2) Applying both health insurance card and social security system as the parallel system. 3) Proposing inclusively health care law for non-Thai in the form of new public funding. 4) Amending or reinterpreting National Health Security Act B.E.2545 article 5 in order to cover Thai and non-Thai.
