Li Yixianhao, Shenzhen Yantian Foreign Languages School Instructed by Mao Xiaolin I would like to choose medical insurance as the one thing that you need to know about China. Everyone in my family, even my 3-year-old younger brother has got a social security card. We can handle a lot of affairs with this card, for example, medical insurance. Have you seen the National Day blockbuster “My People, My Homeland” which consists of five stories? The first one is all about China’s medical insurance. Struggling with the high medical fees, Zhang Beijing’s uncle from rural China, working as a delivery man in Beijing, comes to ask for help. Zhang figures out a “scheme” that can help his uncle masquerade as Zhang in order to use Zhang’s medical insurance. After a series of funny events they finally find Zhang’s uncle has actually already had medical insurance of his own in his rural homeland. It is true that nowadays people in rural places, like Zhang’s uncle, enjoy low-price medicine and reimbursement with medical insurance. My grandma, a 68-year-old patient with long-term hypertension, gets free antihypertensive drugs monthly from the Yantian Community Health Service Center in Shenzhen and she told me that her friend with the same chronic disease in her hometown, Jiangxi Province, enjoys a reimbursement rate of 50 percent. It is estimated that due to major price cuts resulting from negotiations and reimbursement from the national medical insurance system, the out-of-pocket amount paid by patients has dropped by between 80 and 95 percent and the updated list of medicines covered by the national medical insurance scheme now contains 2,709 drugs. All of this has significantly eased the financial burdens of patients and poor families. Additionally, China has recently issued a temporary reimbursement policy to make sure patients with pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus will receive timely and thorough treatment. Expenses needed for treatment will be completely covered by medical insurance. And when personal insurance ends, the State picks up everything. With this social security card, China has been delivering real benefits to the people. This is Chinese medical insurance and this is the China you need to know. | 