China Daily: “China on Thursday announced a decision to expand the coverage of the country’s healthcare insurance system to include the treatment of critical illnesses, aiming to prevent patients from being reduced to poverty by necessary healthcare costs.
The new arrangement will further increase the level of protection that China’s healthcare insurance system can offer, according to a document co-issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and five other central government departments.
Sun Zhigang, head of the health reform office under the State Council, said it aims to ensure that each patient’s total medical expenditure is no more than the “household expenditure for healthcare,” which is set at the level of the regional annual per capita disposable or net income.
In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, Sun said when patients’ medical bills for necessary treatments under the existing basic healthcare insurance system exceed that level, they will be reimbursed by the newly launched critical illness insurance project.
Though around 1.3 billion people, or more than 95 percent of China’s population, were covered by the healthcare insurance system by the end of last year, medical expenditure burdens incurred by patients with severe medical conditions remain heavy, Sun said.
“The new move targets the widely recognized problem of ‘people falling into poverty because of illnesses’, and aims to ensure that most people won’t become impoverished because of diseases,” Sun said.”
via Insurance to cover serious illnesses |Politics |chinadaily.com.cn.
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