China is expected to be able to build a nationwide medical
insurance system by 2020 for all its residents, 75 percent of whom
are still not covered by the umbrella, experts said.
Chen Zhu, vice president of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said
the system should be provided by the government for all people in
both urban and rural areas.
The average per capita gross domestic product is expected to
reach US$4,000 or even higher by then.
Now, only 130 million of the 550 million urban residents have
medical insurance. Most farmers have no medical insurance at
all.
Many people in the country cannot afford any medical services
because of their high costs. At least 80 percent of such services
are available in cities.
In the rural areas of central and western China, a cooperative
medical system is implemented, which pools money from the
governments and farmers to cover their medical costs.
Starting this year, the central government is increasing the
amount of money given to every farmer from 20 yuan (US$2.5) to 40
yuan (US$5).
The system, which can only provide limited support to farmers,
should be replaced by a medical insurance system, experts said.
The central government is going the right direction by devoting
more money to disease prevention and public health improvement at
the grass-roots level, Chen said.
He attended a launching ceremony for three books. An important
theme of these books is to help governments improve the health of
poor people in developing countries, and make the most efficient
use of scarce healthcare resources.
In the past years, China devoted too much attention to economic
development while ignoring building the health care system,
especially in rural areas, Chen said.
Fortunately, the central government has realized this problem.
In the next five years, it will invest 20 billion yuan (US$2.4
billion) to improve medical services in rural areas, said She Jing,
vice minister of the Ministry of Health.
(China Daily April 4, 2006)