Xu Guangchun came to Beijing for the National People's Congress (NPC), but
his first stop was not the Great Hall of the People.
Xu, the Party secretary of Central China's Henan Province, wanted to first
pay a visit to Beijing's Changfeng Hospital, the first medical institution in
the country to specialize in caring for migrant workers.
He had a lot of reasons to do so. Henan has the country's largest rural
population and exports the most migrant workers of any province. Of the 70
million Henan residents whose household registrations list them as farmers, 17
million actually work in cities.
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Xu Guangchun, Party secretary of Henan Province in Central China,
visits a patient at Changfeng Hospital in Beijing before registering for
current session of the National People's Congress on March 2. The hospital
cooperates with Xinyang in southern Henan under the city's medical
insurance program covering migrant workers. Chen
Jian |
Changfeng Hospital, located in the capital city's Fengtai district, provides
medical services to migrant workers in Beijing from Henan's Xinyang area. Unlike
other medical facilities, the hospital offers migrant workers the chance to
register for medical insurance in Beijing, allowing them to recover refunds and
avoid long train rides home.
Most other migrant workers have to either travel home to recover refunded
fees or delay treatment until they can go their home hospitals.
At a time when a hospital visit can easily cost 1,000 yuan ($130), this
program, which Xu describes as "the urbanization of the rural medical
cooperative system", has relieved some Henan workers in Beijing of their health
worries.
Under the program, Xinyang workers can join their hometown medical
cooperative by paying just 10 yuan ($1.2) at area's representative office at
Chengfeng Hospital in Beijing. They also receive matching funds from the
government.
Xinyang's rural health insurance system dates back to 2003. Local farmers can
voluntarily join the system by paying the 10 yuan ($1.2) annual fee to a medical
fund. The central and local governments pay at least another 20 yuan ($2.4) for
each participant. And all participants are entitled to have a proportion of the
fee they pay for any medical treatment refunded.
By the end of last year, more than half of Xinyang's farmers, or 410 million
people, were registered for the programme.
However, as more and more peasants travel to the cities to make a living,
healthcare remains a problem.
Liu Xiang, a Xinyang native who runs a real estate company in Beijing, said
that in the past the migrant workers who worked for his company were reluctant
to join the medical cooperative program because they could only recover their
refunds at designated hospitals in their hometowns.
"If they got sick in Beijing, they would have to foot the bill all by
themselves, or go back home for medical treatment, both are hard choices for
them," Liu said.
He added that one of his employees nearly died during the train ride back
home because his health deteriorated so quickly.
Henan's provincial government is planning to further expand its rural medical
insurance system to serve its workers in other cities.
(China Daily 03/16/2007 page7)
