Making health care affordable in China.

News Making health care affordable in China China is taking steps towards its goal of providing every single person in the country with access to modern health-care services, in part through health financing schemes. Jane Parry and Cui Weiyuan report. When Shi Liuchang, a worker at a state-owned electricity plant in Pingdingshan, Henan province, China, was diagnosed with hepatitis B in 1982, his work unit gave him a blank cheque to pay the medical bill. " All I had to do was bring the cheque to the hospital to have it filled in with the total cost when I was discharged, " he explains. The 1000 yuan bill for a second three-month stay in hospital in 1987 – the equivalent of US$ 268 at that time – was also picked up by Shi's employer. But by 2000, the cost of a two-week stay in hospital had spiralled to over 10 times that amount and his health insurance no longer met the cost. At a time when his monthly salary was 900 yuan, Shi had to pay over 6000 yuan out of his own pocket as his health insurance only covered 4000 yuan of the bill. And things got worse. In 2007, he was diagnosed with liver cancer, after he had been made redundant and was no longer covered by an employer-based health insurance scheme. " After being 'retired' for quite a long time, I could not get any type of insurance because I had hepatitis B. It is impossible with commercial insurance, " Shi, aged 58, recalls. It was not until 2007 that he finally got insured through an urban cooperative health insurance scheme, but even that only provided partial coverage for inpatient care at designated hospitals. Beforehand, Shi has received treatment in the city. Now he was restricted to the local clinic, which lacked staff and facilities to treat liver cancer. " They refused to refer me to the provincial capital-level hospital, saying that cancer was a terminal disease and no matter where I got treated, the final result would invariably be death anyway. " Later that year, Shi managed to round up 120 000 yuan (US$ 17 600 by today's rates) to pay for some of the treatment at the prestigious Beijing Cancer Hospital. " This was a big fortune for me, but without the operation I would have died, " he says. Still, he has completed only …