The World’s Largest Healthcare Umbrella

By staff reporter LI WUZHOU

EARLIER last summer, 65-year-old farmer Song Guicai of Xinwan Village, Punan Town, Lianyungang City in coastal Jiangsu Province, made the 10-kilometer journey from her village to the town’s central hospital. At the end of diagnosis and checkup in the air-conditioned facility she headed toward the counter with a bill showing RMB 119.37. But when the cashier swiped her card for the New Rural Cooperative Medical Care System, the computer screen showed the amount she would actually pay – RMB 62.83.

There are 832 million cardholders like Song in China who are entitled to subsidized medical services under the New Rural Cooperative Medical Care System. Their urban peers have access to a similar government-funded medical insurance, whose coverage has extended to 472 million people. So far, 96 percent of Chinese are covered by the healthcare insurance. Behind this remarkable figure is lavish state spending – the Chinese government plowed RMB 1.5 trillion into healthcare over the past three years.

Recent efforts have not gone unnoticed outside of China. An article in the magazine The Lancet earlier this year lauded China’s healthcare system as the largest in the world, saying that its remarkable achievements over just half a decade would have been impossible in any other country.

Villagers in Zhongsha Village of Nantong City, Jiangsu Province, line up to pay their medical insurance contributions. CFP

Healthcare Insurance for Rural Residents

Song Guicai suffers from esophageal cancer. Last December she had an operation at the Lianyungang People’s Hospital, which would normally have cost RMB 31,000, a big sum for a rural family living on less than one hectare of land. Fortunately she joined the New Rural Cooperative Medical Care System earlier last year. The premium of merely RMB 30 (less than US $5) entitled her to a reimbursement of RMB 12,000. For drugs not covered by the scheme she paid more than RMB 10,000.