China is to bring all its low-income
residents under a medical assistance umbrella, the Ministry of
Civil Affairs has announced.
The main three groups targeted by
the plan, which is to be rolled out over the next five years, are
those living in urban areas who claim minimum living allowance but
are excluded from the medical insurance system, those who take out
medical insurance but with a heavy economic burden, and those who
have special difficulties in making a living.
The system will introduce subsidies
in order to make medical services more affordable.
The ministry's statistics indicate
about 22 million urban Chinese are registered recipients of the
minimum living allowance.
The majority of these are unemployed
workers and their relatives living in northeast, central and
western China, according to the ministry.
Initial pilot projects will be
launched this year continuing until 2007 in a number of cities and
counties across the nation, said the ministry.
Over the next two years, the State
will allocate 300 million yuan (US$36 million) towards running the
projects.
Each province, municipality and
autonomous region should choose at least one-fifth of its cities or
counties to be included in the pilot studies.
Under the system, each area will
have an urban medical aid fund to be raised through local
government budgets, lottery funding and social donations.
The system is supplementary to the
current basic medical insurance system for urban people, and
represents an effort by the State to narrow the gap between the
rich and the poor, said Mi Yongsheng, a senior official with the
ministry.
"We expect to expand the system to
the rural areas and finally weave a whole medical security net," he
said.
But Mi admitted it would be
difficult to ensure the "right" people to receive medical funding
because it is hard to define "heavy economic burdens" and "special
difficulties."
Since different places have
different levels of minimum living subsidy, it will be left to
local governments to decide who qualifies for medical aid, he
said.
Pilot studies have already started
in cities such as Dalian and Shanghai, both of which have included
rural people into the system from the very beginning.
"They have provided a lot of good
ideas such as setting up zero-profit drug stores and pre-treatment
subsidies," Mi said.
(China Daily April 5,
2005)