The central government has announced its goal of providing everyone in the country with basic healthcare by 2020. It's an ambitious goal for a nation that will have a population of 1.5 billion by then.
Making healthcare affordable and easily accessible is a top priority for many countries. But the task is much harder in China, the world's most populous nation.
Gao Qiang, Vice Minister of Health, said, "I think the goal of offering every Chinese basic healthcare is enormous. It will be an arduous task. We have to make sure every citizen, including the huge rural population, will be covered."
But the size of the population is only one of many difficulties.
Gao Qiang said, "The most notable problem right now is that many people have no easy access to medical care. We still have a considerable number of urban and rural residents who have not joined any medical insurance system. Moreover, medical services are public welfare services. We need to stop those hospitals that make profit by selling medicine."
China started to reform its healthcare system in the early 1990s. Today, it has extended medical insurance to 170 million urban residents.
A rural cooperative medical insurance system was launched in 2003 to offer farmers basic healthcare. So far, more than eighty percent of the rural population have participated in the insurance scheme. And this year, unemployed urban residents and children will also be covered by the system.
Healthcare officials say the focus of their current work is to help employees in small firms join the medical insurance system.
