Health insurance needs to be expanded
By Shan Juan (China Daily)Updated: 2007-03-16 09:27
The ultimate goal of the reform is to include all the citizens in a
multi-level health care and insurance system, according to Health Minister Gao
Qiang.
Insurance underwriters will in the process have wide access to the
health care market, according to Chen the CIRC official, as he also urged them
to "seize the opportunity" to expand their medical insurance business.
Working together with the government finance and commercial insurance
programs can, as he said, help China avert a dramatic rise in people's
healthcare costs.
In fact, as early as 2004, the CIRC approved the
People's Insurance Corporation of China (PICC) to run pilot programs in the
healthcare market.
Nowadays, according to CIRC statistics, the demand
for health insurance in the world's most populous country is expected to rise to
no less than 3 trillion yuan ($390 billion) in 2008.
However, there are
problems in matching the growing claims with the premiums, at least in some
regions.
Tan Qijian, a senior manager of PICC Health Insurance's Beijing
branch, told China Daily that some insurers had even suffered a loss of as much
as 200 percent in recent years from health insurance schemes.
Wang
Xianzhang, chairman of the Insurance Association of China, said a comprehensive
medical insurance network required a joint effort by all sectors of society and
the government.
He said the commercial health insurance industry was
still fumbling in its attempts to properly integrate with the government
framework of basic medical insurance for urbanites and rural cooperative medical
care.
"The most important thing the government can do at this point is to
define for us in the insurance industry what it will do and what is left for the
industry to do," he said.
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