China Increases Investment in Elderly Medical Care

In order to strengthen the protection of the elderly in China and increase attention to medical care for the elderly, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health Deng Haihua said on October 10th that the Chinese government will provide one-time free physical examinations, supplementary examinations and health services for people over 65 years of age. guide. Services are provided by urban and rural primary health care institutions, including township health centers and urban community health service agencies.

Although this free inspection has not caused much attention, it has seen an important signal that the Chinese government will continue to increase its investment in geriatric care. China’s aging population is rising rapidly. The current population aged over 60 is 190 million, accounting for 13.7% of the total population. It is estimated that it will reach 216 million in 2015. Once the proportion exceeds 16%, it can be considered as a sign of the imminent aging society.

It is precisely to see the investment in medical care for the elderly, the Ministry of Health began to construct the goal of chronic diseases, because the main group of chronic diseases is the elderly. On July 10th, 15 ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Health, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the "China Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Work Plan (2012-2015)". The purpose of the plan is to reduce the cost of medical treatment for the elderly through prevention.

The Chinese economy does not require large-scale infrastructure investment. It only needs to maintain a proper annual investment infrastructure scale. China’s most pressing need is large-scale social and people’s livelihood investment. This is a “social infrastructure”, especially for education. (labor skill training) and medical investment. More than 50% of medical payments have occurred in the last years of human life. Old-age medical treatment occupies the bulk of overall medical care. It can be said that medical investment is mainly investment in medical care for the elderly.

The purpose of suppressing the price of drugs is to allow Medicare to use them more, and allow more useful new drugs to enter the medical insurance catalog. This is called "the price drop will increase." In general, large-scale investment in medical care for the elderly not only stimulates the economy itself, but also helps to alleviate the economic downturn. Its most important significance is to provide a stable social expectation and tell people that the aging social government is " If you are prepared, responsible, and committed, prolonging retirement does not necessarily mean cutting your time for retirement.