China to Expand Insurance So Sick Don’t ‘Lose Everything’
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China will expand national health coverage by roping in private insurers and include more major diseases, as it seeks to close the mortality gap between rural and urban residents while trying to contain costs.
“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,” Health Minister Chen Zhu, a Paris-trained hematologist, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing today. “When they run out of resources for the later stages and for the patient’s maintenance, a curable illness becomes untreatable.”