Replacing the barefoot doctors
Xinhua reports on progress in bringing medical insurance to rural China.
A Chinese government photo of a barefoot doctor, probably from the time of the Cultural Revolution. An acquaintance of ours served as a barefoot doctor in the early 1970s before coming to the U.S. to attend college.Medical cooperatives expand to 85% of rural residents
"China's rural cooperative medical insurance system, initiated in 2003 to offer farmers basic health care, has expanded to cover more than 85 percent of rural residents, China's health ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an said on Monday...
"The four-year-old scheme, seen by many as a way to help Chinese farmers with virtually no medical insurance, requires a participant to pay 10 yuan (1.3 U.S. dollars) a year. State, provincial, municipal and county governments supply another 40 yuan (5.2 U.S. dollars) per person to the fund...
"Mao said that 35.3 billion yuan (about 4.77 billion U.S. dollars) was pooled by the fund in the first nine months of this year.
"The fund paid out about 22 billion yuan during the same period in reimbursements, Mao said. About 84.7 percent of the money went to in-patient charges and about 13.44 percent for out-patient services...
"Under a five-year (2006-2010) government health plan released on June 7, the cooperative healthcare network will cover all rural residents by the end of 2010."
Labels: change, China, civil society
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home