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Medi-care reform: making it easier to see a doctor
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-12-25 16:45

The medical resources in Guizhou and the larger inner regions of China could hardly match big cities like Beijing, which is home to more than fifty Class-A hospitals. In Guizhou, however, there are only six such hospitals and most of them are based in Guiyang, the provincial capital.

Song traveled by bus and train to Guiyang, but he left immediately after the check-up. "They told me to pay an initial fee of 8,000 yuan if I wanted hospitalization, which went far beyond my capacity." At that time, two of Song"s children were attending secondary schools.

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He then went to Kaili for an operation at the People's Hospital. The costs were still high, as he spent 4,500 yuan for 11 days. "After the operation, they advised me to stay in-house for another 15 days for further monitoring, but I checked out. I was squarely short of money."

The hospital required him to sign a letter, claiming that "everything is irrelevant to the hospital after discharge."

The good news came in the spring of 2007, when he was notified of a new rural cooperative medical scheme. Under the program, Song pays 10 yuan per year, and the government contributes another 10 yuan. If hospitalized, up to 80 percent of the expenditure can be reimbursed.

Path of reform

In spite of the improved benefits experienced by Song, the medical care system of China has long been criticized. The focus is on the soaring medical fees, lack of access to affordable medical services, poor doctor-patient relationships and low medical insurance coverage.

Statistics from the Ministry of Health show that the personal spending on medical services has doubled from 21.2 percent in 1980 to 49.3 percent in 2006, while the government funding dropped to 18.1 percent from 36.2 percent in 1980.

For this reason, medical services, along with tuition fees and housing, is called one of the "three new mountains" that greatly diminish Chinese citizens' sense of happiness, after the reform and opening up.

In 1997, the State Council issued a historic decision, defining medicine as a social welfare sector, which for the fist time meant to correct the previous concept that medical services were a type of commercial product.

In the next ten years, China implemented a series of medical reforms, such as the basic medical insurance for urban employees and the new cooperative medical scheme for farmers.

But the Development Research Center of the State Council, an influential think-tank, concluded in a report in 2005 that "the medical reform in the past decade is basically unsuccessful".