Trial medical insurance scheme urged in cities

NEWS; Pg. 6

Josephine Ma in Beijing

Provinces with sufficient financing should select one to two pilot cities this year to introduce a trial medical insurance scheme for city dwellers who are not covered, Premier Wen Jiabao told a State Council meeting yesterday.

The scheme will supplement an insurance program which covers about 150 million of 260 million urban employees.

Chairing a council meeting, Mr. Wen said the scheme would cover people such as primary and secondary students, teenagers, unemployed and self-employed people.

It will be different from an urban insurance scheme which covers salaried staff on company payrolls.

Mr. Wen said local governments would have to decide the standard of coverage and map out the proportion between individuals and the government based on their own financial strength.

The scheme aims to cover people with serious illness, and qualified urban residents can join on a voluntary basis. However, migrant workers are expected to be excluded as they are generally not considered urban residents.

In his annual Government Work Report to the National People's Congress last month, Mr
Wen pledged to establish an umbrella of medical insurance coverage to the entire population.

Costly medical bills and medicine, poor health care and poor services are the three most prevalent complaints by both urban and rural residents in recent years.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NPC last month, Labour and Social Security Minister Tian Chengping said if the experimental scheme were successful, it could eventually cover as many as 230 to 240 million urban residents who are not on company's payrolls and therefore not covered by any medical schemes.

He said the government hoped the scheme could be extended nationwide by 2010 and its total cost was still being worked out.

The minister would not say if the estimated 110 million urban salaried staff - who by law should be covered by the existing insurance scheme but were left out because their employers refused to pay - would be able to join the experimental scheme.

"It is hard to say," Mr. Tian said. "We'll have to do it step by step."

Poor cover

The percentage of the population covered by health insurance, according to officials 11.5%

April 5, 2007