China's rural cooperative medical care system is to expand to
cover all rural residents by the end of 2008 and government
spending on the system will be sharply increased, Vice Premier Wu Yi said at a national conference on
Friday.
Fund pooled for each person in the scheme will be doubled to 100
yuan (US$13.8) in two years, she said.
It means central and local government subsidies will be
increased from 40 yuan to 80 yuan per person, according to Ding
Xudong, official with the Ministry of Finance.
The scheme, seen by many as a way to help Chinese farmers who
have virtually no medical insurance, now requires a participant to
pay 10 yuan a year. Central, provincial, municipal and county
governments supply another 40 yuan per person to the fund.
When rural residents fall seriously ill, the pooled funds cover
part of their medical costs. Coverage varies by illness and the
actual expenses.
Initiated in 2003, the system has expanded to cover 730 million
rural residents, or approximately 86 percent of rural areas by the
end of 2007.
A total of 42.8 billion yuan was pooled by the fund last year,
according to Wu, compared with only 4 billion yuan in 2003.
The fund paid out about 59.1 billion yuan over the past five
years in reimbursements. Beneficiaries from the cooperative medical
care system reached 920 million person-times.
Wu stressed at the conference that construction of medical
service networks should be reinforced, pharmaceutical supply for
rural areas and the management of the medicare fund should be
supervised.
(Xinhua News Agency February 16, 2008)