Amended Law on Social Insurance and Health Insurance with many policies affecting all workers from July 1, 2025

(kontumtv.vn) – The amended Law on Social Insurance 2024 (abbreviated as the Law on Social Insurance 2024) and the amended Law on Health Insurance (Law on Health Insurance 2024) will officially take effect from July 1, 2025, marking an important milestone in perfecting social security policies. Before the two laws take effect, Director of Vietnam Social Security Le Hung Son shared with the press about this content.

The 2024 Social Insurance Law and the 2024 Health Insurance Law will officially take effect from July 1, 2025. As the agency assigned to implement social insurance and health insurance policies, how has Vietnam Social Security participated in the development and completion of these two important laws, sir?

In recent times, Vietnam Social Security, as the agency implementing social insurance and health insurance policies and regimes, has actively and responsibly participated with competent authorities in developing and amending policies and laws on social insurance, unemployment insurance, and health insurance.

Director of Vietnam Social Security Le Hung Son.

Accordingly, Vietnam Social Security has proactively provided information, statistics, analysis, and impact assessment based on the situation and results of implementing the regime and policies, as well as limitations, difficulties, and shortcomings from practical implementation nationwide. The assessments of Vietnam Social Security, based on practice, have served practically and effectively and served as a solid scientific and practical basis for the agency in charge of drafting the draft laws. The proposals of Vietnam Social Security always aim to fundamentally remove difficulties and shortcomings from the practical implementation of the current Social Insurance and Health Insurance Laws. At the same time, they ensure constitutionality, legality, consistency, uniformity, feasibility, compliance with international standards and gender equality, with the consistent view of expanding and increasing the rights and benefits of participants and beneficiaries of the policy.

Vietnam Social Security also contributes to perfecting regulations on state management of social insurance, health insurance, rights and responsibilities of social insurance agencies, as well as related organizations and individuals, towards a comprehensive and synchronous policy system and a professional, modern, effective, public and transparent implementation system. The proposals of Vietnam Social Security have been highly appreciated, accepted and included in draft laws submitted to the National Assembly for approval.

Along with proposing and contributing ideas to improve policies, Vietnam Social Security also promotes communication on social insurance, health insurance policies and draft laws on media and press channels. Through the implementation of methodical, professional and effective communication work, Vietnam Social Security has proactively, promptly and accurately conveyed information on social insurance and health insurance policies to all levels, sectors, people and workers; including the contents on changes and new points of the draft laws with data, bases and assessments from practice. From there, it contributes to all levels, sectors, people and workers, and enterprises to understand more correctly and fully the social insurance and health insurance policies on the draft laws, creating consensus in implementation, construction and comments.

The changes in the Social Insurance Law 2024 and the Health Insurance Law 2024 are considered “breakthroughs”, bringing more rights and greater benefits to policy participants and beneficiaries. What are those outstanding new points, sir?

The 2024 Social Insurance Law and the 2024 Health Insurance Law with many new points were passed by the National Assembly with a very high consensus, showing that these innovations have followed the Party's direction and policies on social security policies for workers, in line with the reality and expectations of society. The main goal is to expand the subjects of participation, increase rights and benefits in enjoying the policy, and at the same time strengthen sanctions for violations. Specifically:

Regarding the expansion of subjects and flexibility in participation, for compulsory social insurance: The 2024 Social Insurance Law has expanded and clarified many groups of subjects participating in Vietnamese citizens, including workers who agree to work under a different name than the labor contract but have content showing paid work, salary and management, operation and supervision by one party. This is an important step to cover new forms of labor in the market. In addition, the subjects of household heads of individual business households with business registration, permanent militia, non-professional workers in villages, residential groups, part-time workers with a total monthly salary equal to or higher than the lowest salary used as the basis for compulsory social insurance contribution are also added to the subjects participating in compulsory social insurance. In particular, enterprise managers, controllers, representatives of state capital, representatives of enterprise capital at the company and parent company, members of the Board of Directors, General Directors, Directors, members of the Board of Supervisors or controllers and other elected management positions of cooperatives and cooperative unions who do not receive salaries are also included in the subjects participating in compulsory social insurance.

Propaganda about Voluntary Insurance in Quang Nam . Photo: Thanh Dung

Regarding health insurance, the subjects participating in health insurance are expanded synchronously with the subjects of compulsory social insurance, including employees working under fixed-term labor contracts of 01 month or more (including agreements with other names), business managers who do not receive salaries, part-time employees, and registered business owners. In addition, the 2024 Law on Health Insurance also adds many groups of subjects to which the state budget contributes or supports the contribution level, such as employees who take sick leave or maternity leave for 14 working days or more in a month, ethnic minorities in near-poor households residing in ethnic minority and mountainous areas, people aged 70 to under 75 in near-poor households receiving monthly survivor benefits, employees who are not eligible for pensions and are not yet old enough to receive social retirement benefits and are receiving monthly benefits, people participating in the force to protect security and order at the grassroots level, medical staff in villages and hamlets; midwives in villages and hamlets, and victims as prescribed by the Law on Prevention and Combat of Human Trafficking.

Regarding voluntary social insurance: The Law clarifies that the subjects participating in voluntary social insurance are those who are temporarily suspending the performance of labor contracts or work contracts, except in cases where the two parties have an agreement on compulsory social insurance payment during this period. This helps create more favorable conditions for employees in maintaining the period of participation in social insurance.

Regarding increasing benefits and attractiveness in enjoying policies, reducing the conditions on the minimum number of years of social insurance contributions to receive pensions: The Social Insurance Law 2024 stipulates a reduction from 20 years to 15 years of minimum social insurance contributions to receive monthly pensions. This creates opportunities for late or intermittent participants to still accumulate enough years of contributions to receive pensions instead of having to receive social insurance in one lump sum.

Supplementing social pension benefits: This is a new breakthrough, forming a multi-layered social insurance system. The age of receiving social pension benefits has been reduced to 75 years old (currently 80 years old), and in particular, people from poor households and near-poor households from 70 years old to under 75 years old are also entitled to this benefit.

Supplementing maternity benefits for voluntary social insurance: This is an incentive policy to develop voluntary social insurance participants. A mother or father who voluntarily participates in social insurance and gives birth (if they meet the requirements of paying social insurance for at least 6 months in the 12 months before giving birth) will receive a maternity allowance of 2,000,000 VND for each child. This policy also applies to cases of stillbirth in the uterus or stillbirth during labor from 22 weeks of age or older.

In addition, the Social Insurance Law 2024 adds a provision allowing Vietnamese citizens who are of retirement age but are not eligible for pensions and social pension benefits (if they do not receive one-time social insurance and do not retain them) to receive monthly benefits from their own contributions. The lowest level of benefit is equal to the monthly social pension benefit and they are entitled to health insurance paid by the state budget. This creates an important option, helping workers have more security when they retire.

More flexibility in the right to receive one-time social insurance: Those who participated in social insurance before July 1, 2025 have the right to receive one-time social insurance according to previous regulations. For those who participated from July 1, 2025 onwards, the right to receive one-time social insurance is still maintained in 4 specific cases: reaching retirement age but not having paid social insurance for 15 years, settling abroad, suffering from serious illnesses (cancer, paralysis, decompensated cirrhosis, severe tuberculosis, AIDS), or having a working capacity reduction of 81% or more, people with extremely severe disabilities. This demonstrates the balance between immediate benefits and incentives for long-term participation to receive pensions.

Ensuring the rights of foreign workers and Vietnamese workers abroad: The new law has added provisions on cases where international treaties to which Vietnam is a member stipulate that the time of participation in social insurance of workers in Vietnam and abroad is calculated to consider the eligibility for social insurance benefits. The level of social insurance benefits in Vietnam will be calculated based on the time the worker has paid social insurance in Vietnam.

A more flexible mechanism for determining the basis for payment: The 2024 Social Insurance Law replaces the “basic salary” with the “reference level”. The reference level will be decided and adjusted by the Government based on the increase in the consumer price index, economic growth, in accordance with the capacity of the state budget and the Social Insurance Fund. This helps to update more with economic reality. For business owners and some managerial positions that do not receive a salary, they can choose their salary as the basis for compulsory social insurance payment, but the lowest is equal to the reference level and the highest is 20 times the reference level at the time of payment.

Social insurance propaganda in Quang Ninh.

Regarding transparency and convenience in management, electronic social insurance books and health insurance cards: The law stipulates that no later than January 1, 2026, social insurance books will be issued electronically. Social insurance participants have the right to receive monthly information on social insurance contributions from the social insurance agency via electronic means and have their information confirmed upon request. Regarding health insurance cards, the issuance of cards will also be done electronically and in paper, with equal legal value. This contributes to modernizing management and creating convenience for people.

Shorten the time for processing procedures: The time limit for issuing social insurance books and health insurance cards has been clearly defined and significantly shortened, for example, issuing health insurance cards has been shortened from 7 days to only 5 working days. This demonstrates the effort in administrative reform, aiming at the satisfaction of participants.

Regarding strengthening discipline and handling violations: The Social Insurance Law 2024 and the Health Insurance Law 2024 have strengthened sanctions for late payment and evasion of social insurance, unemployment insurance and health insurance. They clearly stipulate acts of late payment and evasion. Handling measures include compulsory payment of the full amount of late payment/evasion with interest rate of 0.03%/day, administrative sanctions or criminal prosecution and not considering awarding emulation titles or forms of commendation. In particular, employers who are late in paying or evading health insurance must also reimburse all medical examination and treatment costs within the scope of benefits that the employee paid during the period when he/she did not have a health insurance card due to the employer's fault.

The 2024 Social Insurance Law also adds prohibited acts such as pledging, buying, selling, mortgaging, and depositing social insurance books in any form. This is to protect the legitimate rights of employees and the strictness of social insurance laws.

The above-mentioned new highlights are evidence of the Party and State's unceasing efforts in building an increasingly complete and widespread social security system, ensuring legitimate and legal rights and interests for people, workers and businesses.

It can be seen that there are many new points in the Social Insurance Law 2024 and the Health Insurance Law 2024 that have great significance for participants and beneficiaries of the policy. To effectively implement and execute these regulations, what solutions has Vietnam Social Security been, is and will be focusing on, sir?

Fully aware of the profound and positive changes of the Social Insurance Law 2024 and the Health Insurance Law 2024, and anticipating difficulties and challenges during implementation, in recent times, Vietnam Social Security has prepared and deployed many synchronous solutions.

Firstly, Vietnam Social Security has proactively and actively advised the Minister of Finance and relevant units in developing Decrees and circulars guiding the Law on Social Insurance 2024 and the Law on Health Insurance 2024. These are important documents specifying the provisions of the law, helping to clearly identify the subjects, contribution levels, benefits, implementation procedures and other related issues, creating favorable conditions for applying the policy in practice. As the agency assigned to organize implementation, protect the legitimate rights and interests of participants and beneficiaries of the policy, Vietnam Social Security has closely followed the drafting process, providing scientific and practical bases from data analysis, evaluating the work of resolving, managing, and paying policies, and synthesizing implementation practices nationwide to serve as a basis for developing Decrees and circulars to ensure consistency, uniformity and feasibility, ensuring the rights of beneficiaries, reforming administrative procedures, etc.

Second, to meet the changing requirements of the new regime, policies and organizational structure, Vietnam Social Security has focused on researching, amending and supplementing business processes throughout the system. The processes are reviewed and further simplified to create maximum convenience and utility for participants and policy beneficiaries.

Third, Vietnam Social Security has stepped up the construction, upgrading, and completion of the information technology system and related professional software to meet the requirements of receiving and processing records and procedures for regimes according to the new provisions of the Law, ensuring smooth and synchronous operations from the first day of implementation.

Fourth, it is important to focus on equipping and updating knowledge and skills for staff in the entire system. Recently, Vietnam Social Security has strengthened training for staff and employees on new regulations of the 2024 Social Insurance Law and the 2024 Health Insurance Law to ensure that social security officers at all levels grasp and proactively handle arising situations; decentralize, delegate authority, clearly define people, clearly define work, clearly define time, clearly define results, and at the same time strengthen inspection and supervision of public service performance to raise the sense of responsibility and service spirit of the entire staff, meeting the requirements of tasks in the new situation.

Fifth, communication work: Communication work on the Social Insurance Law 2024 and the Health Insurance Law 2024 has been carried out regularly, continuously, persistently, and persistently by Vietnam Social Security right from the law-making stage and this work will continue to be strengthened in the coming time. Vietnam Social Security determines that communication "one step ahead", "early, from afar", fully and promptly is necessary to create consensus and unity in the whole society when building and implementing new policies. Communication content focuses on clarifying the practical benefits of participating in social insurance and health insurance; outstanding new points of the Social Insurance Law 2024 and the Health Insurance Law 2024 taking effect from July 1, 2025; guiding people, employees, and businesses in participating and enjoying policies; Instructions on using online public services on social insurance, health insurance, etc. with the motto of communication so that people know about the policy, deeply understand the policy, trust the policy, agree to respond and confidently participate in the social security network.

With careful, proactive and synchronous preparation, Vietnam Social Security is ready to effectively implement the Social Insurance Law 2024 and the Health Insurance Law 2024, ensuring the highest benefits for policy participants and beneficiaries, contributing to building a sustainable and modern social security system, "taking people and businesses as the center of service".

Thank you very much!

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Source: https://kontumtv.vn/tin-tuc/van-hoa-the-thao/luat-bhxh-va-bhyt-sua-doi-voi-nhieu-chinh-sach-anh-huong-toi-moi-nguoi-lao-dong-tu-1-7-2025