The government diverted the responsibilities for financing and administering the health care sector, to the local authorities of the different provinces. When the financial authorities were assigned to the local taxation, they made an easier way for creating inequalities among the rich people residing in coastal areas and poor people residing in the rural areas.
When these changes occurred in the health care sector and the public financial support was made limited, then the service providers in health care sectors were, unfortunately, forced and were given permission to earn profits from specific types of treatments and sales of the drugs. This resulted in causing different problems for the country like the inequalities arose and the inflation was increased as well.
Chinese government initiated the reforms in the health care sector. This was due to the social pressure that China was facing. The goals of the reforms were quite advanced and were worth implementing. The goals targeted to achieve the basic and simple health care system, which could provide safe, high quality, proactive, efficient, convenient and low cost services to the 1.3 billion population of China.
The reforms also included delivering the health care services in different categories such as the health insurance, primary care, and management of the hospitals, medication and the health of the public. Ensuring that reforms are properly implemented the government of China spent $52 billion in the health care sector, in 2008, which was one-quarter of the country’s whole health budget. With the efforts for promoting the services and providing health care to all the public, the government also took initiatives for encouraging the private sectors to invest in the health care sector (Bloom, Gerald and Tang, 2004).
The government also had an aim from reforms that the private payers would take efforts in increasing the providing of health facilities to the public of China, in reforms the needs of the customers with high income were also encouraged. The reforms had a purpose that was to expand the access to health services to all over China. Many of the reforms had goals of improving the quality of delivery of care and encouraging the delivery of care that is more cost-effective and affordable by all types of communities (Rao, Keqin, 2007).
Though, it was not very clear that how the reforms were supposed to be implemented and what kind of results would be achieved from implementing those reforms. Still, it was expected that the reforms would bring great changes to the health care sector, as huge amount of funding was expected by the bodies which were liable to finance the implementation of the reforms and many of the possible stakeholders who could take part in bringing the changes (Tsung-Mei Cheng, November 6, 2013)
China also initiated the reforms to increase the coverage of health cover insurance. In 2006, it was estimated that only 45% of the population of China had health insurance coverage. Whereas in 2009, it was estimated that about 400 million people from urban areas and around 800 million people from the rural areas, which was 90% of the population of China had the health insurance coverage. So that was a positive result of the reform. The need for the reforms were recognized long time ago by the government of China, but they were delayed due to many reasons.
The process of reforms was slow as the government had a challenge of implementing the reforms to 16 administrative levels, and that affected by each administration’s interest. The health care sector’s authority was divided across different agencies. The plan was aiming for providing the best health services and facilities to the public both in the urban and rural areas.
There were 2000 hospitals and 700,000 rural clinics were supposed to be built and the health insurance schemes were supposed to be expanded to cover the whole population. Whereas, the plan demanded for the more active participation from the private sector, the investments from the private sectors and the foreign investments in the hospitals (Ofra Anson, Sun Shifang, 2005)
Moreover, setting up more private clinics and hospitals would have increased the income of the doctors. Other goals of the reforms included strengthening the drug companies, improving the structure of the hospital management and reforming public procurement of medical supplies. Shanghai had implemented different reforms lately.
There were 3 different reforms that were seen in the recent years, the first one was that the private financing schemes were encouraged in the rural areas, so that the problems in accessing financing should be resolved and thus, delivering care and health facilities in villages and townships. The second trend which was witnessed was that the private sector was encouraged to invest in the health care sectors and the third one was that, introducing two major insurance programs....................................
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