China (PRC) - China’s health care reform aims at public interest

International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance

ISSN: 0952-6862

Article publication date: 12 June 2009

150

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Citation

(2009), "China (PRC) - China’s health care reform aims at public interest", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 22 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2009.06222dab.005

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


China (PRC) - China’s health care reform aims at public interest

Article Type: News and views From: International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Volume 22, Issue 4

Keywords: Healthcare improvement, Healthcare reform, Public healthcare systems

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that China will strive to improve the country’s health care system to make health care more accessible and affordable.

He made the comment in an online chat with “netizens” jointly hosted by the central government web site (http://english.gov.cn) and the Xinhua News Agency web site (www.chinaview.cn).

China’s State Council, or Cabinet, passed a long awaited medical reform plan last month which promised to spend 850 billion Yuan (123 billion US dollars) by 2011 to provide universal medical service to the country’s 1.3 billion population.

Wen said the plan covers five aspects:

  1. 1.

    Expand the coverage of medical insurance. Increase the amount of rural and urban population covered by the basic medical insurance system or the new rural cooperative medical system to at least 90 percent by 2011.

  2. 2.

    Build a basic medicine system that includes a catalogue of drugs that mostly needed by the public.

  3. 3.

    Improve medical service systems (especially those at the grassroots level). Build another 5,000 clinics at the township level, 2,000 hospitals at the county level and 2,400 urban community clinics in three years.

  4. 4.

    Gradually provide equal public health services in both rural and urban areas in the country.

  5. 5.

    Start to reform public hospitals.

“Health care reform is not easy. Our determination to push forward the reform shows that the government cares about the health of the public,” Wen said.

Wen said the principle of the reform is that public medical service must have public good as its goal.

For more information: www.xinhuanet.com

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