China’s Health Minister, Chen Zhu, has announced a plan to give every person in China access to basic healthcare by the year 2020.

Called the Healthy China 2020 plan, the Chinese government’s goal is to have universal health care and equal access to public services for its 1.3 billion people.

Chen spoke of the plan at a national conference called the Health Forum in Beijing earlier this week.

The plan will be piloted in selected regions of the country later this year, said officials from the Health Ministry.

China’s current health system has come under attack from many quarters for failing to provide basic health care.

In the 30 years since the communist regime’s “cradle to grave” welfare system, China’s health care has become very expensive, with healthcare providers and drug manufacturers seeking to make increasing amounts of profit.

According to Xinhua News Agency, there has been growing dissatisfaction among ordinary Chinese as they face soaring medical costs, increasingly poor access, unacceptable doctor-patient relations, and poor coverage of the medicare system.

A recent survey of people living in China by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that rising medical costs is their main concern.

Urban dwelling Chinese find they can barely afford to visit the doctor and pay hospital bills. And for the millions of rural Chinese there is hardly any healthcare, even if they could afford it, said a recent BBC News report.

According to China’s Ministry of Health, there are some 400 million people in China with no health coverage.

As the eyes of the world turn toward China with the Olympic Games, it is perhaps a timely opportunity for the Minister and his officials to be unveiling such ambitious and much needed reform.

The main thrust of the plan this year, which will put China on a path of medical and health reform, Chen told Xinhua News, is to pilot some main features and gather experience before rolling out to the rest of the country.

However, he gave no details on how the pilot areas were selected, nor how many there might be.

Apparently, the plan was presented to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) last month, as Chen explained:

“Relevant guiding opinions and coordinated documents on the reform plan have taken shape.”

He said the government would be polling public opinion on the proposed reforms shortly.

China’s medical and health reform will “follow a path with Chinese characteristics”, Vice Minister of Health Gao Qiang told the conference. Xinhua News said this was the first time the government has used this expression.

He explained that China is not going to blindly imitate “foreign models” because that would only lead to mistakes.

Gao said the health plan embraced the following principles and goals:

  • Serve the people.
  • Make public medical institutions “non-profit”.
  • Reduce the involvement of hospitals in the sale of drugs.
  • Increase the role and responsibility of government.
  • Establish a basic medicare network for all.

Gao said that the aim is to:

“Provide safe, effective, convenient and low-cost public health and basic medicare service to both rural and urban citizens.”

However, Xinhua reported that some delegates were not impressed, and called the plan unexciting and unfeasible.

A health official from Guangdong who had been involved in some preplanning discussions said parts of the plan had already been trialled and failed but were still included. He told the news agency that the part about increasing government involvement and responsibility did excite him, but it would require careful planning and coordination to work properly.

Click here for Chinese government’s official website.

Sources: BBC News, Xinhua (Chinese government’s official press agency) report on Chinese government website.

Written by: Catharine Paddock