What can we learn from China’s health insurance reform to improve the horizontal equity of healthcare financing?

Table 1 Changes in China’s social health insurance schemes between 2002 and 2007

	2002		2007
	UWBMI	CMS	UWBMI	NCMS
Target population	Formal urban workers in public sectors, such as government department, the state-owned enterprises and collectively-owned enterprises	Rural residents	Workers in public sectors; workers in private enterprises, social organizations, foreign-invested enterprises; migrant workers, etc	Rural residents
Coverage	30.4% of the total urban residents ^a	9.5% of the total rural residents ^a	44.2% of the total urban residents ^a	89.7% of the total rural residents ^a
Risk-pooling unit	City	Village or town	City	County
Financing source
Government subsidy per person	Nil	Nil	Nil	20–50 RMB Yuan ^b
Employer contribution	6%–8% of salary	\	6%–8% of salary	\
Individual contribution	0%–2% of salary	NA^c	0%–2% of salary	10–20 RMB Yuan ^b

UWBMI Urban Workers Basic Medical Insurance, CMS Cooperative Medical Scheme, NCMS New Cooperative Medical Scheme, NA Not available
^aData source: Reports from the third (2002) and fourth (2007) National Health Services Surveys
^bData source: China Statistical Handbook of NCMS 2007
^cNo official record of individual contributions, but they were flat-rate

ISSN: 1475-9276