China has made huge efforts to improve its health insurance and medical and pharmaceutical services while advancing their coordinated development over the past five years, significantly benefiting its people, said Hu Jinglin, administrator of the National Healthcare Security Administration, on Thursday.

Hu Jinglin, administrator of the National Healthcare Security Administration, speaks at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office, May 18, 2023. [Photo by Xu Xiang/China SCIO]

Hu explained during a press conference that from 2018 to 2022, China continued to improve its basic medical insurance system, which is the largest worldwide. The share of China's population covered by it stabilized at around 95%.

In rural areas, over 99% of low-income residents and those lifted out of poverty are now insured, and health insurance helped raise nearly 10 million households out of poverty. With the annual per capita government subsidy for insured residents rising from 490 yuan to 610 yuan, government subsidies in 2022 alone totaled 600 billion yuan.

A large number of drugs for the treatment of cancer and rare diseases have been included in medical insurance at reasonable prices, which when combined with reimbursements, reduced the economic burden on patients by over 500 billion yuan, Hu said.

He added that the government's procurement of 333 drugs helped lower their prices by over 50% on average, and procurement of eight high-value medical consumables helped cut prices by over 80%. Meanwhile, 140 million people have benefited from outpatient drugs as hypertension and diabetes are now covered by the medical insurance system.

From 2018 to 2022, the number of directly settled medical bills incurred outside of a patient's home province rose significantly from 1.32 million to 38.12 million. Pilot insurance programs for long-term care were also expanded to cover 169 million people across 49 cities, benefiting 1.95 million people who are unable to take care of themselves.

In addition, China shortened the time it takes for new drugs to be included into the list of those covered by medical insurance from an average of nearly five years to less than two years, with some being added in just half a year.

From 2019 to 2022, medical insurance expenditure on new drugs increased from 5.95 billion yuan to 48.19 billion yuan. Some drugs previously supplied mainly in large hospitals are now available in 155,000 designated pharmacies nationwide and covered by the reimbursement policies, Hu said.