By Yin Lei
China’s health insurance market may grow to RMB 1 trillion in 2020, predicted a recent industry report issued by the Insurance Association of China.
This report, the preparation of which started in June 2017, forecasts a positive outlook for China’s health insurance market as this country’s population ages and turns more attention to health.
For the past five years up to 2017, this market already experienced a compounded growth rate of 38 percent in premiums, with the insurance penetration, or the ratio of premiums to the country’s GDP, seeing a growth rate several times faster than that for the insurance market as a whole. In 2016, this indicator was 0.54 percent, up by 50.27 percent from 2015.
Still, China’s commercial health insurance industry is now at an early stage of development, says the report, pointing to the overlapping designs among as many as 4,283 products offered by 149 players at the domestic insurance market.
Other challenges exist. Health management services are underdeveloped. Many insurance companies display a huge interest in services such as managed healthcare but lack practical actions in this regard. Insurance companies cannot exercise much control over the medical expenses due to the lack of a working mechanism that can give them a say over the medical treatments and costs.
The above report puts forward some proposals on this working mechanism, advising, in particular, the early intervention of risk monitoring for critical illnesses.
This move will allow insurance companies access to a beneficiary’s medical data and expenses after the related medical costs clear a certain threshold, e.g. a pre-determined proportion of the deductibles.
It calls for a proper match among premiums, medical expenses and other factors to ensure adequate insurance services on the major illnesses.
The report also proposes the formation of a link-up mechanism among hospitals, official healthcare agencies and commercial insurance companies so that data and information can be shared seamlessly.
