China's critical illness insurance benefits 1m patients

BEIJING - China's critical illness insurance program helped 1.15 million patients in 2014, a health official revealed on Friday.

The total fund reserve for the insurance program has reached 9.7 billion yuan ($1.55 billion), Ma Xiaowei, vice-director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission said at a press conference.

Ma said the insurance covers medical fees for patients with critical illnesses or hard-to-treat diseases, especially those who cannot afford the treatment.

The insurance works with basic medicare insurance, emergency disease assistance and medical assistance projects to form a complete security system that protects citizens from medical conditions.

As of November 2014, critical illness insurance has covers 1,563 county-level regions in China and the government will work to further expand the program and make it available at all provincial-level regions in two or three years, Ma said.

The authority will strengthen the assessment of the use of such funds. Hospitals will be blacklisted and held responsible for unreasonable prescriptions or treatments, he said.