USAID’s Health Finance & Governance (HFG) project has provided long-term technical assistance to Vietnam Social Security (VSS) and Vietnam Administration of HIV/AIDS Control (VAAC) to develop projection models forecasting revenues and expenditures for the country’s Social Health Insurance (SHI) fund as well as SHI obligations for HIV services. After several years of close collaboration and working sessions between USAID/HFG, VSS and VAAC, in early July 2018, both projection models have been finalized and final handed over to VAAC and VSS. In the next step of USAID/HFG support to VSS, user-friendly software derived from the Excel versions of the model is being developed. One of the advantages of the two models is that the users can easily change the inputs based on different scenarios such as policy changes and increased coverage of SHI.

SO WHAT? With the national SHI financial projection models and software, VSS is able to forecast annual financial flows (revenue and expenditure) for better planning and management of the SHI fund. The projections of SHI expenditures for HIV services will inform VAAC’s advocacy to mobilize domestic financial resources for the HIV response as international donor support is reduced. The full projection model will also be a valuable tool for testing various scenarios during the 2019 revision of the Law on Health Insurance.