Chinese medical protection will be broadened to make sure that the sick can afford care.
The latest insurance news from China is that the country has now announced that the national health coverage will be experiencing a notable expansion by bringing private insurers into the fold so that more major diseases will be covered.
The goal is to shri
nk the mortality gap between urban and rural residents.
It is also hoped that this will help to keep costs to a minimum. According to the Chinese health minister, Chen Zhu’s statement regarding this insurance news, “I’ve personally seen as a doctor how, under a system of inadequate health insurance, patients’ families can lose everything paying for the early stages of treatment.”
Zhu is a hematologist trained in Paris, France, and also included in the Beijing statement that when these patients can no longer gain access to the treatments later in the stages of their maintenance because the hospitals no longer have the space, then a disease that is perfectly curable can become untreatable as the resources simply aren’t available to them.
This insurance news should be the start of opportunities to save millions of lives.
The health minister explained that it is his understanding that among 2,800 hospitals that are at the county level, there are approximately 800 that do not have blood dialysis facilities or kidney specialists.
These announcements are the most recent insurance news from China, among several announcements to overhaul public hospitals, train more doctors, reduce the price of medicine, better the services, and decrease costs as a whole. This is vital among the population of the country which is currently aging and is increasing the demand on medical services as disposable incomes continue to rise.
Chen also pointed out that essential drugs will become more accessible among the many steps that will be taken to better the country’s health care.
The most recent health insurance news predictions from McKinsey & Co., in their August 2012 report, showed that the cost of health care should nearly triple between now and 2020, at which time it will reach $1 trillion.
