8m more people to have health insurance in 2011

BEIJING - Eight million more Chinese will be covered by urban basic health insurance in 2011, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said Wednesday.

That will bring the total number of urban residents covered by health insurance to 440 million, or 90 percent of urban residents, from 432 million at the end of 2010, said a report of the ministry, which was released at a press conference in Beijing.

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China's health insurance scheme includes urban basic health insurance for urban dwellers and rural cooperative health insurance for rural residents.

The press conference on the latest development of China's health care reform was held on the sidelines of the ongoing annual parliamentary session.

Regarding rural cooperative health insurance, Chen Zhu, China's health minister, said at the press conference that this year the reimbursement cap for farmers would be raised from 30,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan ($7,600), almost ten times that of farmers' average per capita net annual income.

That means 70 percent of farmers' inpatient expenditure can be reimbursed, 10 percentage points higher than that in 2010.

Further, Chen said China would expand the pilot project providing extra financial assistance to people suffering severe diseases nationwide.

The current pilot project covers children with congenital heart disease and leukemia. Chen said the ministry was considering expanding the package to cover other diseases such as breast cancer, cervical cancer and uremia.

In 2003, China launched the new rural cooperative medical care program, in which a member pays 10 yuan a year and gets partial reimbursement at varied rates for hospital expenses.

Accordingly, central and local governments provided dozens of yuan of supportive fund for each person every year up to 2009. In 2010, the government offered 120 yuan for each member.

The government's supportive fund is to be increased to 200 yuan per person this year, according to the government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao on March 5.

This year, government subsidies for the new rural cooperative medical care system and medical insurance for non-working urban residents will be increased to 200 yuan per person, according to Wen's work report.

Wang Jun, vice finance minister, said at the press conference that when the central authorities initiated a three-year reform program for the country's health care system in 2009, an additional 850 billion yuan would have to be added to central and local government health care budgets.

The latest budget figures showed that the central and local governments would actually spend 1,134 billion yuan on health care between 2009 and 2011 to carry out the reform.

This means the central and local governments would add another 284.2 billion yuan to their original plan of health care spending in the three years, Wang said.

He also noted that the proportion of health care spending in total government expenditure would rise from 4.57 percent in 2008 to 5.35 percent in 2011.