China has promised to improve health care services to all residents by 2020, in response to a public outcry for increased benefits.
Beijing says it will extend basic health care to 90 percent of its population
by 2011, and continue the reforms throughout the decade.
The move is part
of a decade-long plan to better fund public health care and, the official Xinhua
news agency reports, "address criticism that medical services are difficult to
access and increasingly unaffordable."
Joseph Cheng is a
professor in the Department of Public and Social Administration at City
University in Hong Kong. He says the issue is both political and
economic.
"The rationale is that if government can provide better medical
services, education services, then people will feel more secure and they will be
more ready to spend and this will help to maintain sustainable economic growth,"
Cheng said.
Cheng says Beijing needs to show its legitimacy as a
government. When China experienced double-digit growth, people were more
subdued. But as the economy slows due to the global economic crisis, Cheng says
Beijing must deliver "economic growth-plus."
"The government has the
responsibility to build the social security network. But it has to be gradual,"
Cheng said.
China dismantled its public health care system in the 1980s,
amid economic reforms and a trend toward privatization. But the gap between the
rich and poor has widened since then, and health care has increasingly become
harder for the poor, especially in the countryside, to obtain.
Cheng says
about 20 percent of rural residents and about half of urban residents have
medical insurance. But most of China's 1.3 billion people have to pay for their
health care costs and a serious illness can wipe out a family's
savings.
Most Chinese set aside large amounts of savings for education,
medical expenses and retirement. And that means domestic consumption remains
subdued.
Cheng says the government needs to provide a health care and
social security network if it wants people to spend more. Beijing also needs to
fund public health providers, such as pharmaceutical companies, clinics and
hospitals.
Cheng says due to low government funding, doctors at state-run
hospitals are forced to generate income by prescribing over-priced, sometimes
unnecessary drugs and treatment.
In the first three years, China plans to
spend $124 billion toward providing universal health care and improving public
health care facilities.