A review of the proposed regulated voluntary health insurance schemefor Hong Kong

This article reviews the government proposed Health Protection Scheme (HSP) – a voluntary regulated private health insurance scheme -- in terms of its ability to significantly mitigate the health care financing problem associated with the aging population in Hong Kong. It examines the attractiveness of the Scheme in terms of its ability to (1) attract employers currently providing varying types of health insurance plans to their employees to migrate their plans to HSP; and (2) attract individuals and families, especially elderly persons, to subscribe to and remain in the Scheme. The analyses show that it is not likely that the Scheme is able to attract enough individual or group subscribers so as to divert demand from the public sector to the private sector in a significant manner. The article proposes the setting up of a government health care fund for public hospitals as a more effective way in dealing with the health care financing problem as result of population aging