CRI听力:Chinese Patients Benefit from the Healthcare Reform

Sixty-eight year old Wu Jie lives in the northeastern city of Qiqihar. He suffers from diabetes and coronary heart disease.

The elderly man says the government's ongoing medical reforms have greatly alleviated his financial burden so he spends less of his pension on medicine.

"The prices of the medicines have gone down. For example, one of my drugs was 17.3 yuan before. Now it costs only a little more than 6 yuan. So the drug prices have dropped significantly."

Wu Jie is just one of the beneficiaries of the newly established basic medicine system, a key part of China's medical reforms.

Under the government-run medical system, health authorities have issued a list of more than 300 kinds of essential medicines in the country.

The government ensures the strict management of the production, distribution and sale of the designated drugs.

It also requires hospitals to give preference to the basic medicines when prescribing drugs to their patients.

The move is designed to control rising drug prices as many hospitals have sought to make a profit by over-prescribing medicine to patients.

The Health Ministry says the prices of basic drugs have dropped by 25 percent on average compared to what they were before the policy took effect.

Besides setting up such a medicine system, the Chinese government has also expanded a partially public-financed health care network over the past three years.

As of September 2011, 95 percent of China's 1.3 billion people were covered by the country's health care network to various extents.

Klaus Roland, World Bank Country Director for China, speaks highly of the achievement.
 
"China's health care reforms have been remarkably successful. It's a big issue for governments to set up a proper health care system so that people are treated, people have access. And as China is moving ahead to achieve this, that is important these days. People look to China when they want to develop solutions for their own developing problems."

Sun Zhigang, Director of the Medical Reform Office under the State Council, now envisages the next step in the ongoing reforms.

"First, we will perfect the health care system and further improve the reimbursement rate for patients. Moreover, we will speed up the reform of public hospitals."

In recent years, Chinese patients have complained of high medical costs and difficulty in accessing decent medical service.

Meanwhile, some public hospitals have been criticized for misusing public funds while providing substandard service.

The State Council, or China's cabinet, passed a medical reform plan in January 2009 and promised to spend 850 billion yuan by 2011 to provide universal health care to all residents.

For CRI, I'm Shuang Feng.