The country's healthcare system will be further reformed so that
urban and rural residents can have equal access to medical
services, Health Minister Gao Qiang said yesterday.
Addressing a two-day national healthcare working conference
yesterday, he conceded that government investment and supervision
had not been enough during the past years.
Though no specific date was given for when the new measures
would be implemented, sourcesĀ in the Ministry of Health said a
working team to intensify healthcare reforms was studying the
situation and carrying out research to prepare a draft.
More than 10 ministries and commissions, including the Ministry
of Health, are involved in the process.
Gao said China's medical system was facing severe problems,
including the challenge of controlling epidemics, unbalanced
healthcare development in different regions and urban and rural
areas, increasing medical costs and a rising number of medical
accidents. Conflicts between hospitals and patients, too, were on
the rise.
The situation demands that the government establish a medical
care system that would guarantee every citizen receives basic
healthcare services, he said.
The decision to further reform the healthcare system was taken
in response to the widespread public dissatisfaction with the
current system, under which even public hospitals have been accused
of putting profit first.
The aim of public healthcare services should be to serve the
people rather than make a profit, Gao said, and pledged to
strengthen government supervision over public hospitals.
Urban and rural residents alike have been complaining about high
medical costs. Also, hospitals often prescribe overpriced and
unnecessary drugs to patients to earn extra money.
A national survey conducted last year found that nearly half the
respondents did not see a doctor when they fell ill because of the
very high medical costs.
But at the same time, many efforts to extend medical care to
rural residents were successful last year. The first nine months of
2006 saw the country's 140 million farmers benefiting from the
rural cooperative medical care system.
The beneficiaries got 9.58 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) in
subsidy for medical treatment, Gao said, and about 406 million
farmers, or 45.8 percent of the total rural population, joined the
system.
The rural cooperative medical care system, launched in 2003, is
expected to ease the burden of farmers. Each farmer pays 10 yuan
($1.2) to a medical fund every year, with the State and local
governments each contributing 10 yuan ($1.2). And when a farmer
undergoes treatment for an ailment, he can get a certain proportion
of the medical expenses from the fund. By the end of last
September, the system had been extended to 1,400 counties, or 50
percent of the country's total.
(China Daily January 10, 2007)