Health care financing in Thailand has a long history of evolution for nearly half of decade
until Thailand reaches the universal coverage for health care in 2002. It started from user
fee with exemption, and gradually moved from this out-of-pocket payment to prepayment
system (Figure 3). Various forms of prepayment systems were introduced and tested in
Thailand. These implementations are huge differences in terms of contribution, public
subsidy, benefits and quality of services. Anyway, Thailand could reach the coverage of
social protection in health around 70% with these pluralistic approaches, and there were
weakness in terms of efficiency, quality and equity.