Analysis of Benefit Incidence: Thailand's Public Health with Universal Coverage

Employing database of Thai National Socio-Economic Survey 2002, this paper examines the Benefit Incidence Analysis (BIA) method in Thailand’s health sector, and analyses the distributions of implicit medical benefits acquired by groups of patients under Universal Coverage (UC). The study has found that in each level of public health facility, the benefits were distributed equitably to the ability to pay (ATP) of patients. In other words, the poorer patients obtained a larger share of the benefits. Nevertheless, looking at the gradations of facility level as a whole, this study recognizes an unfair access to health care benefits among population of different socio-economic statuses. Provincial hospitals, which provide a higher and more sophisticated level of treatment, seem to benefit groups of rich population more, while facilities with a limited range of treatments – health centers and community hospitals – rather benefit groups of poorer population. In the context of these findings, this paper discusses the inequitable access and care utilising, especially at provincial hospitals, the misallocations of health resources across the country, the appropriation of the co-payments of the 30 Baht Scheme, and the overlaps in allowances of medical benefit of each sub-health scheme integrated under the UC.