Despair often drives people to do desperate things. The case of a 19-year-old villager who committed a crime just in order to go to jail proves it yet again.

A fatal type of anemia could take this boy's life soon unless he gets timely medical treatment. Yet, the prohibitively expensive medical bill that his family could not afford reduced him to sheer despair.

To him, putting himself behind bars and getting free medical treatment in jail appeared to be the only option. He was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for the first robbery he had committed, but only to be made to serve his sentence outside prison. So he did it the second time months later and was sentenced to 18 years in jail.

That he deliberately chose a heavier penalty in order to secure free medical treatment points to the urgency of establishing a social security net covering all.

It is not very difficult to understand how desperate he was. He chose to sacrifice liberty that some consider even dearer than life for a chance to keep himself alive.

This, unfortunately, is no isolated case. Two years ago, a villager in east China's Shandong province was found to have taken an overdose of sleeping pills, hoping in his will that the sale of his body would fetch the family money to save his baby son who was suffering from defective immunity system.

A couple in central Hubei province made bankrupt by serious diseases drowned themselves last year.

To be honest, the central and local governments have made great efforts in establishing healthcare security or rural cooperative health care system in recent years. And the preliminary network has helped both urban and rural residents with their medical bills for minor ailments.

Yet, for such diseases as anemia, which may need half a million yuan or more for treatment, it is really impossible for the rural cooperative healthcare funds to pay for the treatment with the limited accumulated money from villagers and government.

We know that it will be unrealistic to expect a country with a population of 1.3 billion to have a sound healthcare security system covering all its citizens in a short period of time. But that should undoubtedly be our ultimate goal.

Even the healthcare reform that is in the making may not provide ideal solutions to cases like the one of this 19-year-old villager although the reform is expected to make it easier and cheaper for people to see their doctors.

Yet, it should be possible for governments at different levels to pool enough money for a fund to help poor villagers or low-income residents who cannot afford too costly medical bills once they contract a serious disease.

With such a fund, the poor will be spared the worries about serious diseases reducing them to bankruptcy. Compared with the healthcare reform, this should be the priority.

With the impact of the financial crisis unfolding, more migrant workers will find it hard to land jobs. And the hard time ahead for more rural villagers makes healthcare security even more necessary.

(China Daily November 28, 2008)