In the ASEAN countries, social health insurance (SHI) has been considered as an instrument for achieving the breadth of UHC. Significant progress has been made in expanding the coverage of health insurance, despite the existing gaps of insurance coverage across these countries (Fig. 1). As of 2012, Thailand's entire population is covered by SHI. In Malaysia, technically the entire population can use public health services funded via general taxation and low user charges whilst in Singapore, 93% of the population is covered by MediShield, the compulsory government organized health insurance scheme (7). In Indonesia, about 60% of the population is covered by health insurance. The Indonesian government rolled out the Badan Penyelenggara Jaminan Sosial (BPJS) Kesehatan on January 1, 2014, with an ambition to achieve national coverage of UHC by January 2019. This initiative is coordinated by the BPJS – the Social Security Administration, a national body under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Indonesia (8). The coverage of health insurance is however, still low in Lao PDR (15%) and Cambodia (24%). In Lao PDR, the government is now considering the creation of a national health insurance authority through the integration of the four different social health protection schemes. The expectation is that a unified institutional arrangement will lead to universal coverage by 2020. In Cambodia, good progress has been made in using health equity funds to cover the poor. However, civil servants and private sector employees are not covered at all by insurance, while certain vulnerable groups such as the elderly and disabled are excluded from the user fee exemption scheme.