China

China Health Care: Articles

China. World's biggest health care system goes under the knife.
SHENZHEN, CHINA—In most Chinese hospitals, teeming waiting rooms and forlorn patients wheeling intravenous drips through dingy, ill-lit halls are troubling but typical sights. University of Hong Kong (HKU)-Shenzhen Hospital, however, is anything but typical. Its gleaming wards and labs, opened to outpatients last July, are at the vanguard of China's health care reforms.
Making health care affordable in China
China is taking steps towards its goal of providing every single person in the country with access to modern health-care services, in part through health financing schemes. Jane Parry and Cui Weiyuan repor
More cash for health care in China
China has created a new CNY11 billion (US$1.3 billion) fund to improve the country's health system in the wake of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, a senior government official announced on Sept 10.
New evidence on financing equity in China's health care reform--a case study on Gansu province, China
In the transition from a planned economy to a market-oriented economy, China's state funding for health care declined and traditional coverage plans collapsed, leaving China's poor exposed to potentially ruinous health care costs. In reforming health care for the 21st century, equity in health care financing has become a major policy goal. To assess progress towards this goal, this paper examines the equity characteristics of health care financing in a province of northwestern China, comparing the equity performance between urban and rural areas at two different points in time.
Urban health insurance reform and coverage in China using data from National Health Services Surveys in 1998 and 2003
In 1997 there was a major reform of the government run urban health insurance system in China. The principal aims of the reform were to widen coverage of health insurance for the urban employed and contain medical costs. Following this reform there has been a transition from the dual system of the Government Insurance Scheme (GIS) and Labour Insurance Scheme (LIS) to the new Urban Employee Basic Health Insurance Scheme (BHIS).
What can be learned from China's health system?
China's health services used to be described as too difficult to access, too expensive, and too variable in quality. Has the situation changed after 3 years of reform? Winnie Chi-Man Yip and colleagues' most encouraging finding is that China has accomplished near universal coverage in a very short time.