According to Legal Evening News, integration of urban and rural medical insurance has become reality in 17 provinces or provincial-level cities so that their urban and rural residents are now able to enjoy more equal and greater coverage.

Medical issues of urban and rural residents will now be processed in a unified insurance system, which means that they have equal access to reimbursable medical services and enjoy the same proportion of reimbursement.

In January 2016, the State Council issued a proposal on the integration of urban and rural resident medical insurance saying that all provinces or provincial-level cities should unveil their own concrete implementation plans before the end of this year.

Previously in China, medical insurance was divided into the following categories: insurance for urban workers, insurance for non-working urban residents, and rural cooperative insurance for rural residents.

Legal Evening News said that after the integration, the number of authorized medical institutions and reimbursable medicines has greatly increased. Rural residents will especially notice the increase in reimbursable medicines under the new system.

For example, the Tianjin Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau revealed that in Tianjin, the number of reimbursable medicines for rural residents has increased from 2000 to 7300, while authorized medical institutions increased from 30 to 1400.

Some experts have noted however that since the premiums for urban resident medical insurance are slightly higher than those for rural cooperative medical insurance, the integration means that the rural insured will have to pay higher premiums.

An insider said in an interview with Economic Information Daily that a bigger list of reimbursable medicines won’t necessarily mean higher actual reimbursements. That’s because, “Unlike seldom-used or high-priced medicines, the number of common medicines are quite limited and their insurance premium level is also limited. So changes to the list of reimbursable medicines are not necessarily either good or bad”.

He also said that with the expanded list of reimbursable medicines, there will be more opportunities in the medical supplies market at the grassroots level. At that point regulation of rural markets will need careful consideration.