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County to continue free healthcare trial

By Ma Lie in Shaanxi and Lan Tian in Beijing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-27 08:14

Zhao Jie, a medical reform expert with Party School of Central Committee of CPC, said: "As a quest guided by the present nationwide medical reform that urges medical service supplier and acquirer to increase input, Shenmu's program is very positive and significant."

However, a netizen named Zhou Yacui said some people might take advantage of the policy and go to hospitals for the treatment of minor ailments or for chronic diseases.

Another netizen, named Wang Dama, said Shenmu was a rich county with abundant coal resources but it could not afford to continue funding the program if many patients placed demands on scarce medical resources.

Local officials said the county had enough money to continue funding the program.

"The government needs to spend about 100 million yuan on the program every year, but our annual revenue is more than 1.7 billion yuan," Guo Baocheng, secretary of the county Party committee told the Workers Daily.

Located in north Shaanxi province, Shenmu county is ranked No 1 against other provincial counties in terms of economic performance.

It has 50 billion tons of proven coal reserves and has produced more coal than any other Chinese county in the last year.

He said the money spent on the program was much less than expected, and this gave the government more confidence to continue.

Originally, it had planned to spend 26-30 million yuan during the first two months of the program, but it had only spent 22.3 million yuan.

Meanwhile, experts said local government should pay more attention to improving access to operations.

"In my opinion, the program is basically a high-level medical insurance system," Gu Xin, an expert with the school of government in Peking University, told Beijing News.

He said that in that respect it was an abuse of resources.

"Shenmu authorities should reform the program into an insurance system that could share the burden between various parties," Zheng Gongcheng, a professor of Renmin University specializing in social security, told People.com.cn.

They also should strengthen social supervision and ensure openness in the system, he said.

Lei told China Daily that the government encouraged people with minor ailments and chronic disease to seek outpatient service.

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