The last healthcare system we will be looking at in this series is the Chinese healthcare system. Now, with the Chinese healthcare system, there’s been a lot of changes over the years. Throughout Chinese history, it has been many different leaders in recent history that have shaped the current healthcare system. Now over the years of the Chinese health system has changed quite a bit, so it’s important to me to look at how it has changed over time to understand why it works the way it does.

Right off the bat, it’s good to understand that the Chinese health system is also a bounded self-governing system. Of the series, we’ve looked at the English, German, American, and Brazilian Healthcare systems, and what we will notice is that the German, English, and Chinese Healthcare Systems all have bounded self-governing systems that are my opinion, are probably the most effective healthcare system one can employ. When looking at the structure of the Chinese healthcare system, it has three different tiers. The three-tiered system is known as the Healthy China Strategy, with the primary care tier, the community tier, and the Aged tier. China has reformed its healthcare system through the use of private investment and the implementation of social health insurance. Now, within this three-tiered system, there are eight levers that touch on a variety of different Health Care issues, and it’s all done in order to achieve universal health coverage.

The Chinese healthcare system employs social health insurance, and what we’ll begin to learn is that only specific populations are covered, and others are left underinsured. The current social health insurance scheme is left over from the 1960s scheme that died down. Over time the Chinese health system has increased its spending by 4. Additionally, the percent of GDP spent on healthcare has had an increase from 2.96 to 3.59%. One insurance scheme is known as the Basic Medical Insurance scheme for urban employees. This medical insurance scheme is only covering urban employees, while the new Rural Health Insurance scheme is covering those in the rural community. In addition to these two schemes, there’s also the New Urban scheme. These three schemes work together to cover the majority of the Chinese population. While some are better insured than others, the urban employee Basic Medical Insurance scheme covers people the best. Over time Hospital funding has actually increased from 25% to 30%. The decentralization incentivizes hospitals to report wrong information in order to get different amounts of funding.

As mentioned earlier in previous articles, the English and German Healthcare Systems has a tight network that binds stakeholders to the bounded system, and in the same way, the Chinese healthcare system binds all the stakeholders in the system through its social health insurance, and it also connects all the difference between parts through its eight lever system in the three-tier system. However, just like the Brazilian and English healthcare systems, the Chinese healthcare system also has a lack of doctors, and it needs about an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 more medical professionals to meet the basic standards. In the status quo, the Chinese healthcare system has medical professionals comprised of about 50% registered nurses. This can be due to the rigidity of the labor market due to the Chinese financial system.

Overall, when looking at the Chinese healthcare system, one of the things that we can notice is that just like Brazil, it’s moving towards having a better system, and just like Brazil, it’s moving towards having a system that models the German and English Healthcare systems. Currently, in China there’s about 95% of the population is covered, with 37.6% of low-income people reporting not being admitted to the hospital when they go there. But, the Chinese healthcare system has increased health outcomes dramatically as they’ve gone from a 9.2 infant mortality rate to one that has been decreased by 78%, and they’ve decreased the maternal mortality rate by 72.2 percent from the initial 27. When we have seen is the Chinese healthcare system is yet another country whose population is growing in that population is overwhelming that healthcare system. The lack of healthcare professionals and the emerging and fledgling healthcare system operated by the Chinese government is not able to keep up with the population. Over time the Total Health Care expenditures of increase by four times in the Renminbi which means that there is still a promising future for the Chinese Healthcare System.

Sources

Corbett, A. (n.d.). Comparative Health Systems. https://www.coursera.org/learn/comparative-health-systems.