By Linda Pressly Reporter, BBC News 18 July 2011
excerpts
Over half of all healthcare in China is paid for by the consumers themselves
Healthcare – and how you pay for it – is one of life’s big worries. In China few people have private health insurance but the market is growing.
Polly Deng is 30 and lives with her husband and her mother, Lu Xiao Dang, in Shanghai. Polly’s mother has just returned home after a stay in hospital.
“She was in hospital for 12 days having an operation on her foot. It was a minor operation, so we hope she’s going to be fully recovered within three months,” she says.
The cost of Lu Xiao Dang’ procedure was 5,000RMB ($773). The Chinese government’s health insurance scheme paid for 60% of the cost of the operation.
….. “Between the years 2000 and 2009 the average annual growth rate of the private health insurance market in China was around 27%. But what you have to remember is this is growth from a small base,” says Brian Mi, General Manager in China for IMS Health, a medical market research company.”It is only a tiny proportion of the population who have any kind of private cover, around 3.5% of the market spend on healthcare is paid for by private health insurance. Over 50% of all healthcare in China is paid for by the consumers themselves.”