Public needs a fair healthcare system
- Source: Global Times
- [01:21 March 08 2010]
- Comments
By Li Yanjie
Healthcare reform is again the focus in the NPC and CPPCC sessions.
Huang Jiefu, vice health minister and a CPPCC member, said Saturday that the reform aims to let people who are able to afford to pay for it instead of providing free healthcare to all.
The minister misses the point that what the public really wants is a fair healthcare system.
China introduced free healthcare for most urban citizens soon after New China was founded in 1949.
Some 30 years later, after China introduced market economy, the free healthcare could no longer work efficiently. Moreover, to ease the heavy financial burden on the old system, a market-oriented healthcare reform was undertaken.
Now, people find that the reform resulted in difficulties and high cost of medical service for ordinary people, while some others still enjoy high-standard healthcare, especially those who work in the governments and State-owned enterprises.
Yin Dakui, a former health minister, said that Party and government officials spent 80 percent of public funds on healthcare, as they enjoy free services. In 2009, there was a reform of the system for civil servants, aimed at ending free services. The reform required all civil servants to join the basic health insurance like ordinary people, but the government still provides medical aid for them.
In contrast, ordinary people have only a compulsory basic health insurance and a certain percentage of reimbursement when expenditure reaches a certain level. Although government encourages enterprises to buy subsidiary health insurance, it's not mandatory.
In 2009, per capita expenditure on health services was 1,200 yuan ($176). Urbanites can get reimbursement only when spending over 1,800 yuan ($264) in outpatient or 1,300 yuan ($190) in inpatient services in Beijng, one of China's richest cities.
The condition for rural citizens is worse. Although their health insurance system has a lower level for reimbursement, their system offers per capita compensation of only about 100 yuan ($15).
According to another former health minister Zhu Qingsheng, 40 to 60 percent of rural citizens can't afford medical service charges. Often illness drives them to poverty.
No less unfair is the skewed urban-rural distribution of medical resources. Rural citizens account for 80 percent of the population, but have access to only 20 percent of medical resources.
That means poorer rural citizens have to pay the same as urban citizens when stricken by diseases that cannot be treated in the rural areas.
Criticism of the unjust healthcare system and the heart-rending incidents it gives rise to are unending. Such deprivations are not good for social stability and development.
Health services are for public welfare. Every citizen should be able to enjoy fair and just health insurance and care.
One of the most important reasons the earlier healthcare reform proved a failure is that it was unfair. If decision-makers continue to ignore principles of justice and fairness, the new round of reform, too, cannot succeed.
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