Premier's almsdeed triggers call for medicare reform

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-02-20 14:04

BEIJING -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's care of a boy patient who was almost denied life-saving treatment for his leukemia because of a lack of money has caused widespread and mixed reactions in the country this week.

While many praised the premier for his loving gesture, more questioned if the government should instead improve the country's health care system to help more poverty-stricken patients.

Chinese media outlets have intensively reported how Wen earlier this week gave a helping hand to Li Rui, a two-year-old boy suffering from leukemia, after accidentally learning that Li's parents had decided to give up his expensive treatment.

Li was later admitted to Beijing Children's Hospital, one of the country's best, under Wen's instruction and with a 10,000-yuan (1,462 US dollars) donation from him.

Premier Wen Jiabao talks with the mother of the Leukemia-affected kid Li Rui at the Tianjin Railway Station on his inspection tour in Tianjin on February 16, 2009. [Xinhua]

About 300,000 yuan have been reportedly donated to the boy by inspired individuals and organizations thereafter.

Wen once again won admiration and praise from across the country for his care for ordinary people's well-being. But more voiced concerns: What if Li Rui and his parents had not met Premier Wen?

"This boy is very lucky and Premier Wen has done a great job. But what about other unlucky kids?" reads a message posted in a news discussion room on www.163.com, a popular portal website.

"I wish to urge the government to thoroughly improve our medical service (to make it more affordable) because too many have been impoverished by expensive medical bills," reads another message.

A commentary carried in the online edition of People's Daily, the voice of the Communist Party of China, urged the government to set up systems to aid people suffering from "big diseases", or severe illnesses requiring expensive treatment, to control soaring medicine prices.

China launched its market-oriented reform of its traditionally government-funded medical and health system in the late 1980s.

But the changes have been blamed for making medical services difficult to access and unaffordable for the public, especially for more than 800 million rural residents, because about 80 percent of health care resources are in cities.

A Ministry of Health report this week showed about one billion Chinese, out of the 1.3 billion population, have been covered by some sort of health insurance scheme by the end of 2008.

This includes 814 million rural residents in the "New Rural Cooperative Medical System". However, this can only cover some basic services and can hardly pay expensive treatment, such as Li's leukemia treatment.

After Li was diagnosed with leukemia in June last year, his parents, both poor farmers in north China's Hebei Province, managed to raise 60,000 yuan to pay their second son's hospital bills. Three months later they had to suspend the treatment because they could no longer afford soaring bills, according to local media reports.

Last week, Li's parents again brought him to Tianjin city, 120 km from Beijing, for a medical check-up, but then decided to give up the opportunity for further treatment because they could not pay 2,160 yuan in check-up fees.

Ready to go back home, the cash-strapped Li family met Wen in a waiting room at Tianjin Railway Station. The premier was there talking with passengers during an inspection tour of Tianjin.

"We hope Li Rui's case can bring attention on to the fate of more child patients, and serious considerations on how to improve our health care system to help them," Wang Rupeng, secretary general of the China Red Cross Foundation, a national charity group, told Xinhua on Friday.

It is estimated that there are four million leukemia patients in China, and about half of those are children.

The cost for treating the blood disease varies from some 300,000 yuan to more than one million yuan, a hefty bill for even middle-class families. This has forced many patients to delay, or eventually abandon the treatment, Wang said.

The central government is expected to enact within the next few weeks a massive health care reform plan, aiming at widening the coverage of the medical insurance scheme, lower prices of basic medicines, and improve medical services at grass-roots level in the next three years, by investing 850 billion yuan.

"I hope the reform can be extended to special cases like Li Rui. For example, the government should consider allocating lottery money to charity groups so they can help people with special needs," Wang said.

The foundation has offered 30,000 yuan to Li from its "Little Angel Fund," which focuses on impoverished families of young leukemia patients across the country.

The fund has raised only 15.84 million yuan since it was launched in June 2005.

"This is far from being enough because only ten percent of some 4,000 child patients who apply for financial assistance have been helped," Wang said.