Summary (English)

The Governement of China implemented the New Rural Cooperative Medical Insurance (NRCMI) in 2003. This is a community-based scheme that targets the rural population, it plans to give access to basic health care in the space of seven years. The Government has assumed a central leadership in policy, guidance, financing (highly subsidized system), design and implementation of the scheme. Membership is voluntary and benefit packages are generally focused on catastrophic-illness and inpatient-treatment.
The scheme is developing quite quickly, risk prevention and redistribution have improved thanks to the extension of resource and risk pooling. However there remain some concerns, such as the fact that costs are still too high for poor households (members have to pay 80 per cent of medical services); voluntary membership may open the door to adverse selection; since the scheme has not a health insurance system status, legal guarantee, supervision and quality control are hardly feasible.
Investigation on site may be needed in future, if a thourough and comprehensive evaluation is to be carried out.